Month: March 2018

Who knew that 3 months could fly by so fast! We are already on our fourth and final blog post. To wrap up our blog, we have taken a moment to reflect and share the different challenges that arose these last few months.

• What were the challenges we faced as a group?

Over the course of the 3 month project, we faced several barriers and obstacles we had not anticipated.

Facing the Unknown

We entered this project being uncertain what was to be expected of us. Being told to jump into the project without much experience in working with a community partner was daunting at first, especially knowing we were going to continue the works of previous LFS 350 students. We had little time to figure out our roles as members of this project, and forming a mutual understanding with each other so we can dive head first into the incoming timeline.

Workload and Timeline

Many of our group members were juggling multiple courses during our time together. Midterms and assignments stacked up with the demands of the almost weekly due dates, making our time management skills ever so crucial. To further add to the stresses, delays in communication with the community partners have not helped.

Communication

Communication between team members outside of physical meetings was a concern when we met the first time – the fear of a ghost member dropping off the radar. Another concern we envisioned was the silence that plague many group teamwork. Speaking out and stepping up during group meetings, as well as sharing the spotlight and allowing others to express their thoughts. Giving each group member an even share of ideas. Lastly, communication between the community member and ourselves. It has been a struggle getting ahold of the community partners for both permission to integrate their food programs, as well as for an interview. With some community partners not responding to their emails for days at a time, or even outright not responding, keeping up with our project schedule has been difficult.

 

• • So what? How did we face the challenges?
    In order to be able to complete our project successfully and still be able to enjoy the entire process, we knew we had to deal with the challenges one way or another.

Facing the Unknown: Trusting and supporting one another

Because all of the group members knew at least one other member before LFS350, there was a good level of comfort and trust that existed within the group from the very beginning. Having had to jump immediately into the project without any prior knowledge on the project itself and the past work done by the group from the previous term, we learned that we had to support each other on understanding what needed to be done. Furthermore, we had to trust each other that when one of us had an arising confusion or conflict, they would communicate it and allow the other members to support them. For example, when it was time for us to conduct our interviews, it was initially determined that we would go in either a pair or a trio. However, when one of us got stuck because of a last-minute time change in the interview by a community partner, other members provided support by changing their personal schedules and stepping in to help conduct the interview.

Workload and Timeline: Dividing up tasks and knowing when to be or not to be flexible

Juggling multiple courses, including LFS350, was not an easy task for any of the group members. As a group, we agreed that we would always divide up the tasks for assignments early on, so each of us could do our respective parts at our own pace. We set a firm deadline on when we would finish our respective parts by, so it would ensure that the editor in our group had enough time to edit the work sufficiently before the assignment deadline. We knew that some parts of our project needed firm deadlines, but other parts, such as scheduling interviews with the community partners, needed to be flexible. We made sure to complete as much work as we could before the week of conducting interviews. This allowed us to have multiple free interview time slots that the community partners could choose from during the week of conducting interviews.

Communication: Learning when to to reply promptly and when to wait patiently

From having worked on numerous group projects before, we understood the importance of communicating with each other in person and online in a prompt manner. Since everyone was active on Facebook, we made a group chat on Facebook messenger where we would frequently check and share information regarding our project. Throughout the course of the term, it was difficult to find time when the entire group was available to physically meet up and discuss our project progress out of class time, so we all agreed upon the use of group video call meetings during those weeks. Regardless of meeting up in person or online, since most of us knew each other before LFS350, we naturally discovered with time that we were all comfortable with speaking out, allowing each other to share their opinions, and reminding each other to complete certain tasks. We understood that our community partners are busy and it is not always realistic to expect prompt email replies from them. Therefore, we agreed that we would always be patient when waiting for their replies, and after a certain number of working days, we would send them a follow up.

 

• Now what?

Having the chance to reflect on the journey of our project, as well as the outcomes of our project, we realized that we learned a lot about ourselves, each other, and the community. Looking back at the three months we spent on the project, each of us developed a further sense of trust and level of comfort with each other. In addition to that, we were able to improve our collaboration, communication, and creativity skills. Helping to construct a food asset map was a new experience for each one of us and we hope that we were able to improve the Richmond Food Asset Map and the engagement of Richmond community members in their community.

We are extremely grateful that the dietitians at Vancouver Coastal Health were always more than willing to help us with the problems and questions we had all throughout the project. Passing off the Richmond Food Asset Map to next year’s group, we hope to have provided a good platform and base for them to work from because there are always more food assets emerging in Richmond. Since the Richmond Food Asset Map is still relatively new and developing, we also hope to see next year’s group spread more awareness of the map by conducting more interviews and getting feedback. If we were able to go back in time and change one thing about our project, we would want to have the opportunity to conduct more interviews because we believe this would be beneficial to further develop and spread awareness of the Richmond Food Asset Map.

With the final tasks for our group being to showcase our final infographic and complete our final group report, we hope to end on a positive note. We invite fellow classmates and members in the community to come see our 3 month journey and to learn more about the Richmond Food Asset Map by coming to our station at the sharing session! Thank you for following us on our journey. We hope you have enjoyed reading our blog posts as much as we have enjoyed working together as a group.

 

Signing off for the last time,
Tim, Michael, Emily, Selena, Licca

“The universe doesn’t waste anything. Sometimes, we just don’t have standing to see how events or experiences are important.”  ― Adrián Lamo

Let us give you a little update on how our community project is progressing! We had a lot of fun visiting the Vancouver Coastal Health Office and hearing some of the feedback healthcare professionals have on the Food Asset Map. Here is a timeline that highlights all of our weekly objectives and achievements so far.

Week 9 (Feb 25th – March 3rd)

Weekly Objectives:

• Finalize excel file and obtain permission from various community partners
• As a group, create the Moments of Significant Change in terms of our experiences and new knowledge and skills

Achievements:

• Contacted community partners to obtain information regarding food assets and to gain permission to post information onto the Richmond Food Asset Map
• Completed two Moments of Significant Change graphs

Week 10 (March 4th – March 10th)

Weekly Objectives:

• Obtain feedback for blog post 2 and revise blog post 2
• Send updated excel file to Anne

Achievements:

• Contacted certain community partners in person to ask for permission in posting information about their food assets onto the Richmond Food Asset Map
• Completed excel file and sent it to Anne to include it on the Richmond Food Asset Map

Week 11 (March 11th – March 17th)

Weekly Objectives:

• Complete blog post 3
• Update the revised blog post 2 onto our group blog
• Start interviewing community partners and gather feedback about the Food Asset Map

Achievements:

• Updated blog post 2
• Completed blog post 3 and is waiting for our Teaching Assistant’s feedback

During Week 8’s tutorial session, our group was asked to create a chart describing our moments of change through the lenses of both knowledge and skills, and experiences and emotions.

Moments of Significant Change: New knowledge and Skills

Understanding the Project + the Community

The first time we were introduced to our project, we did not know what to expect regarding the workload. However, we felt more comfortable after meeting with our partner and VCH Dietitian, Anne, who gave us background knowledge and details of the last group that worked on this project. As we progressed, we started to reach out to community partners, sharing our goals and asking for permission to use their information via email and phone. By the responses from our community partners, it was evident those who shared the same values were eager to provide us with permission to share their information onto the Richmond Food Asset Map (RFAM). By further communication with the partners that declined our request, we understood that some organizations shared different views and or were more interested in applying their resources to a more specific community in need. Moreover, communication proved to be a challenge between our groups and potential community partners given delayed responses and unsuccessful calls. To speed up the communication process, Michael actually drove to a community partner to speak to the manager directly. These struggles embody the difficulty society has in addressing global issues such as food security. As we have discussed in our lectures, transdisciplinarity and the collaborative work amongst stakeholders and organizations is crucial in addressing community food security.

Applying our knowledge to our project

Understanding where our community partners stand in the fight against food security and food justice made us realise we have only scratched the surface of the problem. Despite the development of the RFAM, more work is needed to address inequities in race, gender, and class that contributes to community food security. Our work this semester is only one step into a much greater journey towards achieving food justice in Richmond.  Our goals of uniting the entire Richmond community, inclusive of vulnerable groups, to access food assets is no small feat; however, it is the beginning of a much greater movement.

Moments of Significant Change: Experiences and Emotions

Overall experience and feelings about the project

Overall, it has been a great experience in which we were given the opportunity to network with various organizations and learn more about the different programs that are offered within the Richmond community, especially since majority of our members live in Richmond.  We felt a great sense of satisfaction when we were able to discover new food asset that we weren’t able to find, an example of this is Nanaksar Gurdwara Gursikh Temple, that offers free food to the community on a daily basis.  Even though we felt like there was a lot of uncertainty prior to finding the various food assets, the project was not as difficult as we first expected. Although there was difficulty communicating with organizations, this experience taught us that some ways of communication are not as effective as others – driving to the centre and speaking to them in person is much more efficient than leaving a message and never hearing back. Despite the positive and negative emotions we felt from the time we met our community partner until we got our proposal back and up until now, we persisted and were able to accomplish a lot and retrieve feedback on a timely matter. Our experience so far has left us satisfied with our progress, but eager to discover our findings as we approach the end of our project

Our Graceful Dismount

“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” ~ Proverb

In order to successfully complete this project, we will aim to use these following strategies:

1. Effective communication among group members

We believe that prompt communication within a group is key to successfully complete tasks. Responding to each other within 24 hours has allowed us to share ideas and information during our group discussions, resolve any confusion that may have come up part way through assignments, and provide help to each other on tasks if necessary.

2. Divide tasks among group members efficiently and evenly

For all of the assignments involved in our projects, such as completing blog posts, communicating to community partners and VCH dietitians, and conducting in-person interviews, our group has and will allocate the different tasks involved in completing the assignments efficiently and evenly. We decided that assignments can be completed quickly and successfully if the tasks are divided evenly and in a way to match the strengths of each member. For instance, Selena is the member with the most experience with blogging and working with html coding, and thus we delegated the task of editing and uploading all of the blog posts to our group blog to her.

3. Use calendar for planning of meetings and due dates

As all of us are taking many other classes in addition to LFS 350, it is easy for us to confuse group meeting times and deadlines for assignments. In order for us to stay organized and be able to visualize all deadlines to a project in one glance, our group decided to use an online calendar.  Having access to this calendar guarantees that every single one of us in the group can keep track of what needs to be completed to ensure the successful completion of our project.

Our project has been successful thus far thanks to these 3 strategies, hence we are feeling hopeful about the remaining weeks.

That’s all from us for now, our next blog post will be our last blog post so stay tune as we reflect on our achievements and struggles throughout the term!