Ever wonder how non-profit organizations work to support our community and local food system? Or how students can apply their knowledge to increase food security amongst community members? Enjoy reading through our first blog posting to find out more about these topics! We will introduce you to our team of talented individuals, discuss our team goals, give you an insight to who we will be working with, and tell you about what we have experienced thus far.
THE TEAM
We are a group of LFS 350 students at the University of British Columbia who are passionate about exploring all aspects of our food system. We come from different programs in our faculty with varying backgrounds and skills, but we all share a similar goal of wanting to better our community through nutrition education and policy implementation. Luan Li is a fourth year Food Science major, interested in exploring food processing and food security. Rachel Kao is a fourth year Food, Nutrition and Health major, interested in community-based nutrition education workshops. Both Simryn Mann and Sylvia Wei are third year Nutritional Sciences majors, interested in nutrition education and nutrition research. Erik Toren is a fourth year Global Resources major keen on working with policy implementation and increasing food access. We are hopeful that this project will bring together our assets and help us explore the complexities of our local food system.
TOGETHER AS A TEAM
Upon our plenary session, we discussed our diverse interests and academic disciplines. We reached a consensus on our common interests and goals for our community learning by reflecting on our individual diversities, expressing our individual passions, and highlighting the skills that we wish to develop throughout this course. This exercise allowed us to foster and strengthen the individual assets in our group, and we soon discovered that although our group is composed of members from various academic disciplines, we share a common interest in promoting conscientious eating and nutrition education in youth. More than one member indicated that they would like to pursue nutrition education for children/youth in elementary schools, while another indicated interest in policy research and creation. Our similar interests naturally resulted in a common aspiration and goal to improve the wellness of children and youth in British Columbia by working with a local community partner on nutrition education or the creation of guidelines.
We chose to collaborate with Pacific Community Resources Society (PCRS) to continue supporting and improving their current food-programming operations since this project is a perfect blend of nutrition education and policy creation. We hope to improve community nutrition for the youth who use PCRS’s services and programs by first analyzing the organization’s food budget program and then shifting the purchasing towards more locally grown and nutritious foods. By collaborating with a large non-profit society in Vancouver, we will gain insight regarding the social issues in Vancouver and learn how we can help create a better environment in which people can thrive in healthy communities. We hope our efforts in working with PCRS will not only strengthen our individual skill sets, but also make a visible and meaningful impact for the youth in our communities.
OUR PROJECT WITH PACIFIC COMMUNITY RESOURCES SOCIETY
The Pacific Community Resources Society is a not-for-profit agency dedicated to inspiring healthy and inclusive communities through leadership and collaboration. The PCRS partners with industries and government agencies in the Lower Mainland, such as Vancouver Coastal Health, United Way, Starbucks and the British Columbia Ministry for Children and Family Development. Forty-two different programs provide children, youth and adults with employment and residential services, education, and substance counselling, among many others (Pacific Community Resources Society, 2016).
Meals are provided at a number of the PCRS programs. The food purchased contributes greatly to the social and nutrition goals of these programs, but also represents a significant weekly expense as outlined in the Fall 2015 LFS 350 group project.
The overarching goal of PCRS coordinators is to improve the lives of members while simultaneously reducing their environmental impact. In meeting with our community partners, three objectives were agreed upon in order to narrow this goal:
- Give staff tools to make informed purchasing decisions
- Increase purchases from local producers and locally owned distributors
- Shift spending towards vendors that share the same values as the Pacific Community Resources Society
We hope to define a project proposal that aligns with the PCRS mission statement and values within the local economic, social and environmental framework agreed upon with our community partners.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Prior to meeting with PCRS, our team had little knowledge of the components needed to construct the food purchasing matrix our project description outlined. However, the idea of helping an organization reach their goal of implementing their values into their food purchasing was a challenge that we felt we could overcome as a team. Asset-Based Community Development is an approach that is based on working as a team and using existing skills, knowledge, and relationships to meet goals that lead to community development (Mathie & Cunningham, 2003). In a TED Talk by Ernesto Sirolli (2012), he discusses that success is not born from one individual, but from a team of individuals working together. Because we were not initially given all of the details of what our project encompassed, we felt confused by what was expected of us, but we were comforted by the fact that this is a group project and not a project we had to tackle on our own. In other words, we appreciate the team effort this project requires.
We went into our meeting with our community partners at Pacific Community Resources Society wanting to listen to the project description from their perspective. We recognized that this asset-based approach was to both our benefit and to our community partner’s benefit because if our group went to the meeting solely to tell our community partners that we knew they needed a food purchasing matrix, we would have lost the opportunity to discuss alternate projects that may be more helpful for this organization. Ernesto Sirolli supports that one of the most important principles of helping others is to first listen to the people you are trying to help instead of immediately bringing solutions to problems you think exist (TED, 2012). Our group listened and asked questions as our community partners discussed what they believed would make their organization more efficient. Through this method, we were all surprised by how many avenues we can take to help PCRS apply their organization’s values to their practices, such as through nutrition guidelines, policy making, and food purchasing.
We are looking forward to working with Pacific Community Resources Society to construct and execute a project that implements positive change. Moving forward, we will recognize that Asset-Based Community Development is dependent on relationships. We understand that every individual has an asset that can contribute to the team, and we should be open to involving as many individuals as we can in our project (Mathie & Cunningham, 2003). Follow our postings to keep updated with our future plans with PCRS to improve food security within this local non-profit organization!
References:
Mathie, A., & Cunningham, G. (2003). From clients to citizens: Asset-based Community Development as a strategy for community-driven development. Development In Practice, 13(5), 474-486.
Pacific Community Resources Society. (2016). About Us. Retrieved from http://www.pcrs.ca/about-us/
TED. (2012). Ernesto Sirolli: Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen
