Welcome back! With only one week before the end of the term, it is hard to imagine that three months have passed by since the beginning of this project. The struggles and uncertainty that we felt up until two weeks ago have all but subsided. We are excited and hopeful that we will be able to meet our goals of delivering meaningful results to our community partner, and to finish our project with emotions running high.
SIGNIFICANT CHANGES
Since the day of our last blog posting, we have continued to grapple with the uncertainty as to if, and how, we would be able to present any meaningful results to our community partner. From the onset of our project, our main objective was to provide solutions for the smaller youth centers in Surrey to better align food-purchasing decisions with our community partner’s values.
This objective was based on our group’s preconceived ideas of what the barrier(s) to purchasing decisions are and what we felt was necessary to present to PCRS. Our assumptions had been that the Surrey youth centers’ lack of industrial kitchens, and presumably inadequate storage and refrigeration, presented barriers for staff in making economical, environmental and healthy food purchasing decisions. However, the responses we received during our interviews challenged these assumptions and with them, our idea of the solutions we had intended on providing.
We read the journal article “Techniques to Identify Themes” in preparation for a meeting with our T.A, Carrie, to discuss and to better understand our interview results. After this valuable session, we came to realize that even though our findings were contrary to what we had expected, they were no less valuable in completing a meaningful project. We were most relieved when Carrie acknowledged that we simply might not be able to develop the solutions we had hoped for given the scope of the course and where we found ourselves in the time frame of this ongoing partnership with PCRS.
This realization proved to be extremely valuable in redefining what we wanted to deliver to our community partner, and reaffirmed that all hope was not lost in ending the term in a great emotional state.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Taking a step back and looking critically at our project, it became clear that our group had become fixated by a necessity to deliver a tangible solutions-based result. We also realized that we had been trying to cram the long-term goals of aligning food-purchasing decisions at PCRS into our short three-month semester. In order to provide any meaningful recommendations or solutions, one must fully understand the problem.
In lecture, we discussed the concept of cognitive flexibility, which focuses on problem solving through uncertain conditions by reorganizing knowledge (W. Valley, personal communication, January 11, 2016). Because we were fixated on our initial goals, we forgot to take into account the new information that we were retrieving for our project from interviews with PCRS staff, experiences with this organization, and material we were learning in lecture. That is, we forgot to practice cognitive flexibility. The new information we were gaining helped us shift our project focus from finding new food vendors that aligned with PCRS’ values, to identifying factors that affected food accessibility at PCRS. In the second lecture of this course (way back in January), we were taught that Asset-Based Community Development is focused on building from the already existing strengths in the community (W. Valley, personal communication, March 7, 2016). In the beginning of this course, we were jumping to find solutions without understanding and identifying the strengths of the existing food purchasing decision methods at PCRS. As this project progressed, we were able to understand decision making at PCRS, and identify what is working and what is not working. Thus instead of building a whole new purchasing matrix, we decided to make recommendations based on the already existing food purchasing foundation at PCRS.
The analytical tools provided in “Techniques to Identify Themes” by Gery Ryan and Russel Bernard were extremely useful in processing the varied responses to our interview questions, that in some instances, contradicted our assumptions. We were then able to better interpret the wide range of data we had collected. These tools also allowed us to present our findings visually, which made trends and barriers clearer and easier to identify.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR OUR PROJECT
Now that we are able to clearly understand and present our data, we are prepared for the fast-approaching end of the term. Our group has ultimately decided to restructure our results away from concrete solutions. As a group we want to deliver results to our community partner that demonstrate, as clearly as possible, the underlying barriers that eventual solutions will need to address.
With our group still wanting to provide our contacts at PCRS with a tangible and accessible final product (other than our final report),we will determine how the information we have gathered will be most useful to them. In the meantime, we plan on compiling our data tables in an easy-to-use infographic as a way for PCRS decision makers to visualize our findings.
It is our understanding that there will be an ongoing partnership between the Land and Foods Systems faculty at UBC and the Pacific Community Resource Society. In keeping with this collaboration, we now move forward with the goal of producing a report that will give the next cohort of LFS 350 students the best possible platform with which to begin their term project and to continue ours.
These past three months have been stressful, informative and enjoyable. We are confident that we will be able to finish well and we hope that you have enjoyed taking this journey with us. Our goal of this blog was to not only give updates on our project, but to bring awareness to how food accessibility can affect everyone. The next time you buy your food, think about what is limiting your food choices. Then, try to overcome those barriers. Although it may seem time-consuming to think about your food choices, the benefits will last even longer. As that old saying goes, “you are what you eat,” so choose to find ways to make “good” food more accessible.
As promised in our other blog posts, we are finally going to share our final project with you. You can find our short and sweet summary of our project below. Thank you for reading!
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
A group of students in LFS 350—a course at UBC focused on improving land and food systems—collaborated with Pacific Community Resources Society (PCRS) to improve how food is being purchased at this organization. Studies have shown that individuals are limited in their food purchasing choices due to factors, such as being unable to afford the higher cost of healthy food compared to unhealthy food. These food purchasing challenges are thought to be concerns at PCRS youth centres. This project aimed to investigate food purchasing decisions at PCRS, to explore factors limiting food accessibility at PCRS, and to make recommendations for better food purchasing by asking the following questions: how are purchasing decisions made in each facility? How can we find food suppliers that are living wage employers, local growers, and/or suppliers of healthy food? How can we use our results to provide practical recommendations that will have positive effects on food purchasing habits at PCRS?
METHODS
Three PCRS-managed youth centers were chosen in order to address these questions – the Broadway Youth Resource Center (BYRC) in Vancouver, as well as the Newton and Guildford youth centers in Surrey. Staff responsible for purchasing food at these locations were interviewed to assess how and why food purchasing decisions were made, and to identify common barriers responsible for influencing these purchases.
RESULTS
Overall, food is prepared manually and fresh produce (80%) is more frequently purchased than other foods. Correspondents (n=4) emphasized a priority of an increased budget that would allow for greater food purchasing flexibility. Although all correspondents defined ‘food security’ differently, they all emphasized the importance of having a balance of both meals and snacks for youth. All youth centre locations cited sufficient food storage space. Youth satisfaction (90%), taste (87.5%), and sufficient budget (85%) were listed as the top influencing factors in food purchasing.
RECOMMENDATIONS
We suggest that the youth centres discuss increased budgets with PCRS head offices to allow for the purchasing of better quality foods. We also encourage PCRS to gradually introduce fruits and vegetables into the meals provided to youth to maintain youths’ satisfaction with meals and to increase youths’ acceptance of healthy foods into their diet.
CONCLUSIONS
By suggesting ways to overcome the barrier of budget and ways to introduce healthy options to satisfy youths’ preferences, we have provided PCRS with the next step to align their services to their values and promote food secure youth.
