Proposal Report
Previous Weeks’ Objectives
Over the past couple weeks, our main objectives have been to draft and complete the project proposal report. While this was the main focus, our other objectives included maintaining active communication with Joanne by being in regular contact through email and scheduling a time to meet face-to-face. Other objectives have included:
- Learn more about the Hastings-Sunrise area and determine current food accessibility barriers
- As a group determine what we would like to get from this project and how we can best go about this
- Come up with a tentative schedule involving which group member would attain which focus group training session
Week of February 8 – 15 Objectives
This week, our community partner, Joanne, contacted us and informed our group that there had been a scope shift and the timeline of our original project would not be possible. As a result, we decided that it was necessary to meet with Joanne to determine what our new project would encompass. Our other objectives for the week included:
- Choose project from list of options Joanne had given us
- Adjust schedules according to changes
- Create new timeline for project
- Write new proposal for community project
Looking Forward: Upcoming Objectives
Having completed our proposal report last week, we are now on our way to taking what we have proposed and transforming it into reality. Our future objectives are to:
- Touch base with prospective businesses in the Little-Riley Mountain park area to provide them with information about our project and to give them a heads-up that we will be contacting them in a few weeks
- Familiarize ourselves with each of the businesses we will be contacting by learning about their history, background and mission
- Formulate a standardized set of questions to ask business and community partners
- Go to Little-Riley Mountain Park and actually start contacting businesses
Achievements
As busy as we have been these past weeks, our group managed to stay in contact with Joanne as we encountered, and now continue to maneuver through, an unexpected hurdle. We were notified that our original project plan with Hastings-Sunrise Community Food Network was put on hold, and that some major changes may occur. Although this news was not ideal, we worked to embrace the changes and the uncertainty that comes with collaborating with real community projects.
Over the course of the past week we worked together and finished our proposal, which reflects our project plan prior to the change, as we only found out what our new role would be after the proposal was due. Fortunately, we are able to maintain the same guiding principles that we outlined in our proposal, and apply our research to our new project plan.
This past Monday we met with Joanne to discuss the new project focus. We are eager to begin the new project, and feel that collectively we can do something great with it. Being able to readily shift the scope of our project so drastically and take it in stride is a major accomplishment that can be difficult for students when a grade is at stake. It is important to acknowledge that this project is not only about our grade, but also about a community and that real people are counting on us to get the job done.
What?
Last week, we were advised that our initial project with HSCFN Community Food Circles, was not going to proceed as planned, and therefore our project assessing food access and barriers would not come to fruition within the timeframe of the semester. After some discussion with Joanne, we will now be working with the Little-Mountain Riley Park Food Network (LMRPFN) on the Nourish Your Neighbourhood (NYN) initiative. Based on preliminary information, we will be designing a checklist of possible fundraising ideas and will be directly contacting and distributing them to local businesses in Vancouver. Several businesses have donated in past fundraisers; we will contact both previous and new prospective businesses to participate. These businesses will have the opportunity to communicate their capacity to participate for the next NYN fundraising campaign, occurring in October 2016, through these checklists. A few of the items on our checklist include:
- Direct monetary donations
- A portion of proceeds from a given sale item
- Proceeds from a private ticketed event
- Donation of garden tools and equipment
- Gift baskets
So What?
While we were told to expect uncertainty and embrace it with flexibility, our group was not expecting to have an entirely different project halfway through the term. However, when the timeline of our original project shifted and it no longer aligned with the class dates, we were unsure for a period of time about how to proceed with our work. But, our group is very excited about the new project that we perhaps have even more interest in and welcome the chance to put our efforts towards it. The NYN is a fundraising campaign in support of food security with a particular focus on access to food, that will invite local businesses in the Little-Mountain Riley Park neighbourhood to participate in their own chosen way. Comparable to the interdisciplinary approach that we discussed in the first plenary session, each business will have the opportunity to share their addition to the project. Although the businesses will all be related to food, each one of them has a niche and a unique input to the fundraiser, whether it be a popular dish they will offer the proceeds of for a day, or produce specials that will encourage customers to put their money towards improving food security in the area. We will work together with the organizations to find contributions that are in line with their company interests as well as the interests of the fundraising campaign to eliminate the “blind spots” for a well-rounded set of fundraising offerings.
Now what?
As a result of this shift our group is going to need to gain knowledge on how to make a successful survey and will need to prepare a survey in time to distribute it to businesses before our project deadline. In the next few weeks we will be working as a group to learn about surveys and the LMRP neighbourhood businesses based on previous data from past NYN campaigns. In addition to the hard-skills needed to accomplish this project, our group will also need to put effort into exploring the community dynamics and discovering how different sectors can work in their own way to support food security.