Farewell

 

The end of the school year is approaching and for some of us, the end of our undergrad! As upper years, we’ve experienced academic highs and lows, and group projects of all kind. This group project in particular, was definitely one of the most memorable experiences our undergrad.

 

In this blog post, we’d like to share with you the final moments of this community-centered effort:

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What?

Probably the biggest moment of significance we’ve experienced thus far was our Infographic presentation. Not only did we get to showcase a term’s worth of effort, but we also got to interact with classmates and various visitors to learn about all of the projects and activities that everyone worked so hard on!

 

Here is our infographic!

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So what?

The moments leading up to our presentation were full of plenty of group discussions. In order to create a meaningful infographic poster that was both engaging and insightful, we had to refer back to our course concepts. This included our AER papers and our lectures/discussions on ethnicity in the food system, asset-based community development, and the local Vancouver food movements.

1. We used the AER outlines to give our poster and clear and definite structure. This way, no matter how the infographic was graphically designed, the message it conveyed was preserved.
2.  Secondly, we drew upon our discussions on ethnicity to provide context to our poster. As the Sustenance Festival aims to promote a more inclusive and culturally diverse food movement, we felt that the points made in class helped to strengthen the project’s significance. In our interactions with other students, we were also able to refer back to the Chinese-Canadian farmers topic that Colin referred to in class.
3. Next, we used the idea of asset-based community development (ABCD) to provide an introduction to our project. Since our podcast project was driven by the Sustenance Festival’s community listening campaign in 2017, we felt it important to emphasize their asset-based approach in an intriguing hook to audiences. With many of the participants being our fellow classmates, we believe that using a class-discussed concept like ABCD would be a surefire way to connect with them.
4. Finally, in our talks, we related our project to the other projects in LFS 350 by integrating them into the local Vancouver food movement. By putting things into perspective, we believed that audiences would be better able to how all our combined efforts were somehow working to change the food system.

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Now what?

Although we had finished the infographic and presentation, we will still use it as a reference and going to write our final report based on the content we put in the infographic. With the final report coming up, we’re working extensively on writing it! However, due to some drawbacks (in script approval), our group is also focused on writing our scripts and compiling our podcasts. Since we have already identified the significance, method, purpose, and implication when we were completing infographic, it will not take us long to continue finishing them in the final report.

 

Parting Reflections

This project was a unique and challenging learning experience that taught us how to work with community partners, diverse teammates, and social issues surrounding food. We hope to these podcasts will be a tool used to open people’s minds towards cultural activities within the Vancouver food movement.

 

Firstly, we’d like to thank our community partners: Brenda, Steph, and Rebecca for their cooperation and efforts towards inclusivity in Vancouver. We also want to thank Tori, our TA, and Will, our professor, for guiding us on this journey. We had a lot of fun working on this and look forward to the development of future projects for the Sustenance Festival!

 

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” 

– Robert Collier

We’re now at week 8. Coming back from reading break should have seemed like a luxury, but the majority of our group has come back only to be buried in multiple commitments and tasks (thus, this week has earned the adoring nickname of ‘Hell week‘). After dealing with a slight rejection (and major discouragement) in receiving feedback from our project proposal, which can be found here: Sustenance-Festival-Proposal.

 

After our week 8 check-in, we were able to regroup and reflect on our moments of significance throughout this course:

Visually, we interpreted and grouped our collective moments in the form of a chart, shown below:

We’ve listed some individual thoughts and feelings below..

Luisa:

What? — I think finding out my project and meeting my group was a big one for me. I was super excited to learn that I got to work on such a creative project with both familiar and new faces!

So What? — From there, I got a clearer picture of our group dynamic and what it would be like working together. I find this was really important since we got to clearly outline what our expectations were for each other, the project and ourselves. So far, it seems like everything is in line with those.

Now What? — Fortunately, our teamwork has been effective since we clarified everything at the beginning. Now, I hope to continue working well together and close in any gaps in our collaboration. For example, we will be outlining our weekly objectives so to enhance communication and group vision, so that all of us have a united and planned the idea of how we’re going to approach the upcoming weeks.

Jeff：

What? —  For me, meeting with our community partners has been the most significant moment in the project thus far.  

So what? —  Getting out of the classroom and into the community on repeated occasion with the intent of building a relationship and accomplishing a goal with Vancouver Park’s employees feels both rewarding and as though it meets my ambitions for my current stage in my education.

I came to the second meeting with a deeper knowledge of not only the Sustenance Festival but of our community partner and the individuals we are working with.   I found this allowed for richer and slightly more personalized conversations surrounding how we can reach our goals for the project.

Now What? —  Moving forward I feel the majority of our communication with our community partners will be virtual.   Here, the key to being successful will be carrying that same dynamic conversation from real life into our online conversations.  Also, bringing that same energy and knowledge to the recordings of the individuals found in the material we will be weaving into our podcast.

 

Nian:

What? — Meeting with our community partners and our groups in a busy, crazy mids&dues’ week is both a relief and an exciting moment this term so far.  

So what? — After meeting and discussing with Stepho and Branda, we are more clear about the objectives and how we can improve our project. It is a great chance for me to learn more about Vancouver and why and how the project can change or influence current situation. Although we haven’t started to record the podcast, I am pretty confident that our group will make the podcast attractive and can help others better understanding the Vancouver Sustenance Festival.

Now what? — We have done the schedule of our project and now it is the time for us to implement it. It is true that we don’t have much time left and all of us are busy working, studying and preparing for the project. I hope everything will be fine!

 

The big NOW WHAT?

Starting this week, we’ve outlined our weekly objectives and strategies to achieve them for this project. They can be found here.