Course:LFS350/Projects/2014W1/T18/Proposal

Version Control

Version	Author	Changes	Date
1.0	All team members	Initial Draft	Friday, Oct. 3
1.1	All Team Members	Research Question, Methods, Interview questions Based on Megans feedback	Saturday, October 18th
2.0	All Team Members	Final Edits for second submission	Saturday, Nov 1st

Project Background

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations(2014), food security is a state where all people always have access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their needs for an active and healthy life. Presently, food security is a growing challenge with the increasing population, and rising costs of food, transportation, and agriculture (Canadian International Development Agency, 2011). In order to determine the state of food security in an area, certain indicators can be examined. Four broad areas that can be looked at are availability, access, stability, and utilization (FAO, 2014). More specifically, this could include determining average protein supply, domestic food price, or prevalence of undernourishment (FAO, 2014). Additionally, there is recognition of a cultural component required to achieve food security at the community level (Wilkins, 2008). This cultural feature requires culturally appropriate food to be present within each "pillar" of the FAO's definition ( Wilkins, 2008)' Academic research on issues surrounding food security is a critical part of advancing knowledge and understanding that can then be extended into practical applications towards solutions (CIDA, 2011). For our project we will be working with the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm to explore the current state of, and possible ways to strengthen, food security in the Dunbar-Southlands community of Vancouver, British Columbia.

The UBC Farm is a 24 ha area of land on UBC’s Southern Campus. Located at the Farm is the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS) is a research centre with the goal of understanding and transforming local and global food systems towards a more sustainable, food secure future (CSFS at UBC Farm, 2014). One of the ways in which the CSFS strives to achieve this, is by collaboration and engagement with local communities. Currently, the CSFS has many programs and initiatives for community engagement. These include various workshops, children’s programs, and indigenous initiatives that provide a place and platform for knowledge sharing between the farm and community supporters (CSFS at UBC Farm, 2014). The CSFS also provides students with the opportunity to participate in this knowledge sharing through community based research projects (CSFS at UBC Farm, 2014). Our group has been given the chance to undertake a unique research project involving the CSFS and the Dunbar-Southlands community located in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Dunbar-Southlands community on the South Western region of Metro Vancouver, with the northern "Dunbar" portion comprised of several parks, schools, and a centrally located community center at the southern end of the main shopping district of Dunbar St. This community is also unique in the fact that the "Southlands" portion is comprised of territory and a reservation belonging to the Musqueam Nation (City of Vancouver, 2014). The Musqueam land lies adjacent to several golf courses, stables and privately owned land, which also include some farms and gardens (City of Vancouver, 2014).

The CSFS has indicated a lack of information on their end regarding the current state and emerging needs of constituents of the Dunbar-Southlands community (Personal communication, Victoria Hodson, Oct 3rd 2014). Since Dunbar is one of the major neighboring communities to UBC, it has the potential to be a prime area for collaboration with the UBC farm. For our project, we will be striving to help bridge this gap in community outreach by conducting a community assessment on the Dunbar area. This will be accomplished by collecting information from community centres and schools in Dunbar, and also by compiling a list of the assets and resources within the community that align with the CSFS’s goals of food security and sovereignty. From this we hope that we will be able to provide the CSFS with information on potential stakeholders or initiatives with which a mutually beneficial connection can be made with the Dunbar community through new opportunities for collaboration, outreach, and engagement in order promote Food Systems awareness. We hope that this will foster a dynamic symbiotic relationship that will help enhance community food security.

Stakeholder Summary

Name, Role & Organization	Responsibilities
Saffron Amber Kristina Tim Bill Susie Winnie Carol	Tasks to be shared among all members: Conduct community scan/asset inventory Compile relevant government statistics Organize and analyze data Make a map of Dunbar showing assets Write literature review Interview community centres and schools Create a list of possibilities for community partner Create project documents Document Management (location, updates) Status Reports Lessons Learned Provide necessary feedback if needed
UBC Farm - Victoria Hodson - Academic Assistant	Provide high level guidance and approve scope, budget and schedule Provide connections and linkages with community Sign off Charter and Plan Sign off on changes to Charter or Plan
Dunbar Community Participants	Provide responses to interview questions, alternatively express opinions and perspectives relating to the community and its needs

Purpose and Research Question

One of the main goals of the CSFS is to facilitate education initiatives in order to enhance the farm’s role in the wider community with particular interest in discovering issues that pertain to regional food systems and food security ( CSFS at the UBC Farm 2014). Despite the vast boundary of the endowment lands, the geographical location of Dunbar-Southlands makes it a significant neighbouring area to the UBC Farm. Even despite the short distance that separates the CSFS and the Dunbar-Southlands community, there is currently no existing partnerships or collaborative community engagement projects underway between them.

The Dunbar-Southlands is a unique region of Vancouver in terms of its demographic makeup, and physical environment and cultural history (City of Vancouver, 2014). Scholarly research is currently quite sparse regarding the regional food system of this neighborhood, therefore the importance of assessing any needs this community faces is increasingly important, in addition to being valued by the CSFS.

With this in my mind, our research team's interest in assessing this particular community food system is in regards to food security. We plan to explore what is reliably available, accessible, culturally appropriate within the community, as well as any educational programs and community initiatives that currently exist ( or lack thereof ) in conjunction with quantitative data about demographics of the area. The research question we will then seek to answer is:

What opportunities for collaboration related to food security presently exist between the UBC Farm and the Dunbar-Southlands community?

"In order to answer our broad research question, we have compiled a list of sub questions that when answered will fulfill the bigger picture we are looking to answer with our research.

1. What currently exists in Dunbar-Southlands in relation to the the community food system?
2. What do stakeholders and community assets identify as gaps within their community food system?
3. Do these gaps pertain to the objectives and resources of the Farm ?

Methods

Our research will be conducted using a mixed method approach. Due to the nature of our project, more emphasis will be on qualitative data; through observations and interviews. Quantitative data will also be collected and will include statistics gathered online from various databases to gain a better statistical understanding of the population density, ethnic demographics, average income, food basket expenditure as it pertains to food security in the Dunbar-Southlands community.

Data will be collected through observations and interviews with targeted asset stakeholders to help us have a better understanding of the interests of Dunbar community, Dunbar schools, and any other initiatives in the area. Initiatives are organizations that are relate to or promote food systems awareness. Afterwards, we will use such data to gain a better understanding of the current context of food security and food sovereignty status of Dunbar. Subsequently, we will analyze for strengths and weaknesses of the various programs we find. We will list and categorize the various assets we find within the community and correlate it with our statistical demographic data. This will enable us to locate a stakeholder or initiative that may be willing, or that we will suggest to partner with CSFS to promote Food Security or Food systems awareness within Dunbar-Southlands community.

In addition, we will be mapping (courtesy of Google Maps) the locations that observations were made to give us a better perspective of coverage.

Data Collection

Part I: Observation-based data collection

1. Map out the locations of schools, community centers, and initiatives.
2. Locate relevant initiatives or services relating to food security and food sovereignty.
3. Take photos of anything related to food security and sovereignty.

Part II: Data collected from internet

1. Population density in the Dunbar Community
2. Income level and average spending (CPI)
3. Look for websites with relative information about programs in Dunbar

Part III: Interviews

1. Ask for interviewing permission for various schools, community centers, and initiatives
2. Hold either by phone or face-to-face, using pre-made questions (at bottom)
3. List out all relevant programs

Qualitative Data: Asset Inventory Method

We will collect our data by following the asset inventory method, which is a qualitative technique to collect and gather information through observing schools, community centers, public services and organizations (Victoria Hodson, personal communication, September 24, 2014). Specifically in this project, our eight group members (divided into groups of 3) will pay visits to the Dunbar community (mostly on West 41st Ave and Dunbar Street) and observe events and food related programs that are being held in the community. We will focus on observing the conditions of food security and sustainability within the community and label assets that are relevant to these topics. A list of observations will be collected and recorded from each community location. Items pertaining to food security and sustainability will be our focus and we will emphasize these findings in the report. A Word or Excel document will be put together after the visits and then further analysis of the data will be carried out.

Qualitative: Interviews

We will also be interviewing stakeholders in local schools, community centers and initiatives. With prior permission, interviews will be held over the phone; we can also hold face-to-face interviews if there is preference. There will be at least 3 group members holding the same interview in order to prevent bias and error. Questions, discussions and answers will be compiled into a Word document for each interview. Analysis and conclusions will be made through these documents.

Analysis of data

Quantitative: Inductive Analysis

The method that we will be using to analyze data collected, which addresses the current status of interests in the Dunbar-Southlands area, is inductive analysis. Thomas describes this method as involving simple and systematic procedures for analysis of qualitative data in order to acquire valid and dependable results (2006). We have decided to use inductive approach to analyze our data since we are at an early exploratory stage of the research project where very few preconceived phenomenon, relationship or topic is discovered and therefore a clear and concise thesis has not yet been established (Kodish and Gittelsohn, 2011). Inductive analysis of the data used concurrently can provide further insights into launching future steps of our project, not limited to aiding the development of a model of the information that the data possess. In addition, many prominent and significant themes and topics can emerge from the set of data as no boundaries or structured methodologies were set in the beginning (Thomas 2006). The general process of the inductive analysis would first include observing data to draw patterns and similarities, then to formulate possible hypotheses and finally to conclude a most tentative theory (Trochim, 2006). Provided with this information, inductive analysis of our data would follow similar instructions. With the data collection, we will first rearrange and group similarities under topics. Then we will draw relations and regularities amongst them. With all data being analyzed and grouped, we will then detect the most essential topic and formulate our hypotheses and theory.

Final Notes

It is worth nothing that we will ensure anonymity to the people we interview (with the possible exception of the UBC Farm). School and community partners will be asked similar questions to minimize bias, but any potential biases, errors of measurements, and limitations will be summarized and discussed upon in discussion section of our report. All data will be appropriately analyzed and any inferences made will be properly discussed. All data collected will be given equal consideration and outliers will not be deleted from our results.

Advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages:

• Balances efficient data collection and analysis with data that provides context
• Data from quantitative analysis can be easily made and a broad understanding can be inferred
• Qualitative data aspect provides contextual info and help facilitates understand and also the interpretation of quantitative
• No ethics approval will be needed
• Methods suitable for studying connections and relationships

Disadvantages:

• May possibly use one method more than another elicit bias
• Research lacks ethical opinions that could be beneficial in the research
• Data collection process will be time consuming
• Data collected by qualitative method will be mostly influenced by the questions we decide to ask
• Quality of qualitative data collected depends on interviewers’ knowledge, background and understanding of the questions.
• Qualitative data collected through interview may only reflect the interviews’ personal opinions rather than opinions representing the entire organizations.

APPENDIX

Interview Questions

Used for Schools, Community Centers, Musqueam Nation, Grocery Stores

Food Service Programs

1. Do you offer food service programs?
   • If Yes, please describe the program?
   • What are the objectives of the program?
   • What are some specific examples of food that is offered?
   • What are some reasons for offering these foods? (Nutrition, cost, convenience...)
   • To what extent do you believe the program(s) have impact with for the Students?
   • Can you describe any gaps in the services?

1. If No: What are some reasons for not offering food service?

Food System Education

1. Do you provide or offer any food systems education?
2. If Yes:
   • Please describe the program
   • What are the objectives of the programs?
   • Where does these program(s) take place? (Ie. are they inside classrooms/ community center/ facility or outside )
   • What are some specific examples of activities in the program(s)?
   • To what extent do you believe the program(s) have impact within the community?
   • Can you describe any gaps in the services?

1. If No:
   • Would you consider implementing any food education programs?
   • If no, what are the reasons for not implementing food education program?
   • If yes, would you consider working with UBC farm?

1. • • Provide examples of programs the Farm offers, such as:
       • On site Farmers market Tuesdays and Saturdays
       • CSA - Organic locally produced food delivery
       • Wholesale produce - Restaurant participants
       • Farm Wonders - Hands on Science and Food system education
       • Workshops - Include cheese making, fermentation, cooking classes

1. To what extent do you believe students understand the importance of nutrition and food system in which they are apart of?
2. Can you describe any gaps in the services?

Additional details to suit individuality of interviewees:

Community Center

1. Are the programs offered:
   • Regular/Seasonal/year-round?
   • Food and nutrition related?
   • Are they community programs or Events? (workshops, fair, children’s program, community council, etc)
     • Name a few (and describe them)
     • What are the objectives of these programs/events?
     • Are they successful in terms of attendance and participation of community members?
2. If No: Can you describe why not?
3. Can you describe The Sustenance Festival?

Community Initiatives

1. How well is the community served through public food services?

Musqueam Nation"

1. Where does these program(s) take place? (Ie. on or off Muqueam land?)

Farm

1. What is the current state of the connection between the UBC farm and the local community? Are there any specific areas in which they’d like to make improvements?
2. Is the farm interested in interacting or working with any demographic group in the community in particular?
3. What are some specific goals that the farm seeks to accomplish through existing/future partnerships with interested members/organizations in the local community?
4. What are some specific local food issues that the farm intends to address?
5. What are some possible obstacle that could impose limitations on the projects?
6. To what extent is the farm willing to expand or invest in their projects/programs?

Deliverables

• Asset Inventory - Spreadsheet - code qualitative data based on inductive data collection
• Collection of government statistics on area demographics such as average age, income, cost of food, etc.
• Formal Literature Review of peer reviewed articles on methods of community collaboration and outreach with university-based farms
• Thematic analysis and suggestions for future research
• Community map with visual representation of assets and interests. This will be made on an ongoing basis and available to view via the link provided:

Dunbar-Southlands Map of Assets

The Boundaries defined the City of Vancouver (City of Vancouver, 2014b)

Success Factors/Criteria

This project is to be completed in 2 months, a short period of time to conduct community research. Our team of students does not have time to test the limits of what we can achieve and the viability before we finish the project. Therefore, given the time limit, our success will have to be determined by looking at what we actually accomplished versus what we wanted to accomplish. To measure how successful we were at achieving our goals, we will ask for comments and thoughts from our community partner, fellow LFS 350 students, and course leaders. We will also measure success ourselves by listing the pros and cons, what's missing from our project, and what could be improved.

Further to this, we will also examine the results of the data analysis, and see if it can answer our research question. For example, does the data suggest that there are any barriers between Dunbar and UBC farm? Are there potential opportunities for UBC farm to build partnership/collaboration with Dunbar in the near future for purposes such as public education, refinement of the local food system and/or even further research?
We hope that the end result of our report will provide decision-makers the stepping stone necessary to expand on our project and to search for potential collaboration opportunities for our partners. This will allow our partner to get an understanding of the interests of the Dunbar community and to know their concerns. Additionally, this project can provide insight to UBC Farm with potential community partner targets for further development of connections and relationships.

Scope Change

Scope changes requested by any stakeholder of the project must be agreed upon, approved and signed by all stakeholders. The agreed format is to revise this charter with version controls. Because this is critical to keep track of, the version control is displayed at the beginning of the charter.

Communication Plan

• Amber will serve as the liaison between Victoria and the group via email
• Established facebook group will serve as the primary communication tool for group members to ask questions, plan meetings, and delegate tasks
• Doodle is also used for planning meetings (other than Wednesday), for everyone to vote on which times they are available
• Intermittent meetings on Wednesdays from 12pm-1pm will be planned in Agora as required

Action Item	Deliverable	Dates	Accountable
Weekly Meetings	Updates on project progress as well as plans for future work	Wednesdays from 12pm- 1pm, as needed Alternatively- Wednesdays during tutorial sections open for team work	All members are expected to attend, if possible, and have any assigned tasks completed
Communication through LFS 350 Facebook group	Updates on project and communication outside of meeting times	Ongoing	All members are expected to be aware of information posted to the group page and messages.
Information sharing as it becomes available	Project Specific Information	Ongoing	All stakeholders to provide information in a timely manner and to provide prior and reasonable notice of dates when they will be unavailable Amber will be the main contact with Victoria Saffron will be the main contact with Megan

Milestones

Milestone	Event or Deliverable	Target Date	Responsibility
Milestone1	Early Findings Report	Wednesday, Oct. 22	First community asset scan and interview round completed Preliminary revised project proposal
Milestone 2	Strategic Opportunity Highlights	Friday, Oct. 31	Have all data collected, if any missing after first scan Begin literature review Collect statistical data Have Dunbar map completed Finalize revised proposal
Milestone 4	Revised Charter	Tuesday October 21st	All group members
Milestone 5	Discuss Revised Charter with Megan	Wednesday October 22nd	All group members available
Milestone 6	Final Draft of Project Proposal	Saturday Nov 1st	All group members
Milestone 7	2nd Meeting with Victoria	November 5th	All group members available and Megan (Possibly)
Milestone 8	Final Strategic Opportunity Highlights	Wednesday, Nov. 8	Compile data from asset inventory, observations and interviews and begin drawing conclusions Literature review sources and notes compiled Have all community interviews completed
Milestone 8	Final Report	Friday, Nov 15	Final literature review and conclusion completed Wiki page completed

Approvals

The following individuals hereby approve this Project Charter:

Role or Title	Name and Signature	Date
Community partner	Victoria Hodson	Oct 29th
TA	Megan Schneider	October 16th

References

Canadian International Development Agency. (2011). "Increasing Food Security: CIDA's Food Security Strategy."

Retrieved from http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ubc/reader.action?docID=10471177&ppg=1

CSFS at the UBC Farm. (2014). About.

Retrieved from http://ubcfarm.ubc.ca/about/

City of Vancouver. (2014). Dunbar-Southlands.

Retrieved from http://vancouver.ca/green-vancouver/dunbar.aspx

City of Vancouver. (2014). " Data Catalogue."

Retrieved from http://data.vancouver.ca/datacatalogue/localAreaBoundary.htm

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2014). "Food Security Statistics."

Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess-fs/en/

Gordon, Sarah. (2014). "Dunbar." Retrieved from http://www.dunbarlife.com/p/dunbar

Kodish, S., & Gittelsohn, J. (2011). Systematic Data Analysis in Qualitative Health Research: Building Credible and Clear Findings'.

Sight and Life, 25 (2), 52-56.

Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. (2008). Telephone Interview.

Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ps/retrieve.dosgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&inPS=true&prodId=GVRL&userGroupName=ubcolumbi:a&tabID=T003&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&co::ntentSegment=&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPosition=1&contentSet=GALE%7CCX:3073600449&&docId=GALE%7CCX3073600449&docType=GALE

Thomas, D.R. (2006). A General Inductive Approach for Analyzing Qualitative Evaluation Data. American Journal of Evaluation, 27, 237-246. Doi: 10.1177/1098214005283748

Trochim, W. (2006). Deduction and Induction.

Retrieved from http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/dedind.php

Wikipedia, (2014). "Dunbar-Southlands." Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%E2%80%93Southlands