Course:LFS350/Projects/2014W1/T7/Proposal
Version Control
| Version | Author | Role | Changes | Date |
| 2.0 | Team 7 | Team Admins | 2nd Revised Version | November 1, 2014 |
| 1.0 | Team 7 | Team Admins | Initial version | October 2, 2014 |
Project Background
Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House is a non-profit organization which has been a volunteer-driven community service in East Vancouver for over 45 years (Frog Hollow, 2011). They are planning to transform an unused area outside the community house into a herb garden, or what they are hoping for; a herb spiral. This herb garden would help to teach the youths the benefits about eating local and growing their own foods, in which we will talk about during the workshop. Our team hopes that at the end of the workshop, this generation of students would want to plant their own gardens, to grow whichever herbs, vegetables or fruits they would like and to even educate others on the benefits of local eating. When we say youths, we mean students grades 8-12 from Notre Dame Regional Secondary School.
Team 7 will be teaching these high school students what to do with the herbs after the garden has been planted and in our case a workshop on tea and vitamin water making, while incorporating reasons why local is a better option. A tea making workshop was done last year with some LFS 250 students and according to some classmates, the students seemed very interested in the workshop. According to get local BC, by eating local , we are helping the farmer stay in business, he or she receives a higher percentage of our food dollar, but when bought at a farmers market, they will receive 100% of the profits. Another reason why we say that eating local is a better choice is because it will be more nutritious in the long run, then going out to buy herbs that have been sitting there for a few days (FarmFolk CityFolk, 2011).
The coordinator of Frog Hollow, Molina has mentioned that workshops in general seem to get these students wanting to participate (Chow.M, 2014). Some of the workshops Frog Hollow has done or will be doing, is to teach the youths about what is to come after they graduate and to help them find career paths for their future. Our workshop is teaching them something that they can do at home or even pass on the information to other. We do hope that the youth would even want to help build the herb garden after we are no longer working with Frog Hollow.
Stakeholder Summary
| Name, Role & Organization | Responsibilities |
Team 7, Land and Food Systems 350, University of British Columbia
|
Executive Team (Grace, Heather, Ruth, Willy):
Management Team (Jerry, Joy, JungSoo, Karimah):
|
Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House, Association of Neighbourhood Houses of BC
|
*Initiation and realization of project which integrates member within the community
|
Purpose and Research Question
The purpose of our research project is to evaluate the youths' perception of the production of food within the Frog Hollow community by using herbs produced in a community herb garden as an example. The evaluation will take place in a workshop described perviously in the project background, and in conjunction with the workshop we plan to address the issue to eating local, healthy, nutritious foods. As we are introducing a local food diet as an alternative diet, we can evaluate their perceptions which can hopefully interest them in the local food diet and in turn help strengthen the local food security. As an result, the knowledge gained from this research can strengthen the Vancouver's food security and help the local farmers to a certain extent by simply eating more local; furthermore, the students who participated can help encourage other students in their high school and the community to eat more local as well. For the Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House, our workshop could also possibly become a program to teach and encourage local, nutritious, healthy eating that could not only include the herb teas, but also cooking with herbs, which are skills the students can use throughout their life.
Knowing the purpose of this research project, the underlying research question is the following:
- How do youths (grade 8 to 12) perceive the benefits of producing food within the Frog Hollow community?
Methods
We will be hosting a tea making workshop where we will teach a group of youth about the benefits of eating local foods and an application of the use of local food. We are promoting our event through flyers sent to Molina. In order to test our research question we will be conducting a survey at the end of the workshop.
The survey consists of quantitative questions asking students to rank their different views on local foods such as availability, variety, cost, and benefits. The benefits of local foods include high nutrition content, low carbon foot print, employment, and having food security (Klavinski, 2013). Some survey questions are formatted to the Likert response scale to measure the student’s different levels of value in local foods (Trochim,2006). While the other half of survey consists of nominal questions asking the students to rank their values in local foods.
The questions that use the Likert response scale, we will take the average for each question. This way we will be able to find the student’s overall value and perception of local foods. For nominal questions we will tally all the student’s response to see which variables are the most important / valued.
Also during the workshop we will have two group members taking down qualitative notes about participants’ interest, based on body language, and engagement. This portion of our data collection is qualitative. In terms of our data-analysis, of the qualitative data we will use Kodish and Gittelsohn’s approach of systematic qualitative data analysis. Therefore, we will we review all the notes gathered and coding them to reduce their responses into meaningful categories for further interpretation (Kodish & Gittelsohn, 2011).
In terms of our research epistemology, we will be conducting our research in an objective manner to the best of our abilities. Our study will utilize pragmatic knowledge claims as we are focusing on a mixed-method approach to data collection (Creswell, 2003). Our research aligns with the theory of pragmatism in terms of methodology as we will be focusing on mixed methods research, and we will be drawing meaning from both the qualitative and quantitative data (Creswell, 2003).
The disadvantage of our data collection methods is that, as we are not able to gage the participants long-term retention of the information. Also, we are unable to quantify the reach of our workshop, we are unsure how the participants will use the knowledge they gained during the workshop affect their conscious decisions proceeding our workshop.
The advantages to conducting our research using a mixed method approach is that we are drawing different methods in order to get a better holistic answer to our research question.
In terms of key sources of information, we conducted research to find what herbs could be grown in all seasons in Vancouver. With this list of herbs we found instructions of how to turn them into teas. Therefore, we are on track for our workshop on November 12th.
Deliverables
Once the project is underway, weekly communications between Team 7 and Frog Hollows Neighbourhood House will be made via e-mail. The contents shall contain detailed updates regarding the initiation, execution, or conclusion of the project, including, but not limited to, project design, progress, discrepancies, and the members' availabilities.
The final report will include multiple sections. It will be generated towards the end of Team 7's involvement with Frog Hollows Neighbourhood House, and shall contain:
- Background information introducing the community partner and their ideals, as well as the purpose and relevance of the project in regards to the partner.
- The main research question centering the project.
- The methods used in data collection. Include any differences between proposed methods and methods used during actual implementation of the project.
- Data analysis and our findings, including their significance and whether they contributed to the community partner's cause as a whole.
- Conclusions, possible improvements, and future expansions.
If possible, the above report will be provided to the community partner both in its original text format, as well as in a concise presentation. A date could be arranged for the members to present the report to the partner at the Neighbourhood House, and allow for discussions regarding the results.
Success Factors/Criteria
To assess the success of the project and to better understand the outcome, various success factors will be taken into measurement. It is important to note that we will constantly measure and improve the effectiveness of our project and efficiency of communications with different stakeholders.
First of all, it is essential to ask feedbacks from our community partner, Molina. Her feedback and active involvement will be the most important measurement for the success of this project. Small interviews will be held throughout the project with Molina to constantly receive feedbacks on the usefulness of our information and the effectiveness of the education.
In addition, a simple survey regarding to their understandings of local food and food production will be handed out to all participants after the workshop. The outcome of the survey would serve as an indicator. It could tell us how informative our workshop is as well as where the participants’ knowledge deficiency lies. Having the results, not only that we can improve the next presentation, also, we can share the information with Molina to help her better carry out future community works.
Lastly, during the project, we keep re-examining and applying what we have learnt in class to daily life. We have encountered numerous problems throughout the project. This is a good experience for us to better understand the difference between academic approach and practical implementation. Discussion will be held after the project to talk out each team members’ personal growing.
Our goal is somewhat of a long-term nature, as we hope to successfully translate and enforce the community values to each and every youth so that they are more aware of, and participate more willingly in, community-based projects beyond the current one. Extended commitment is required to accurately record the each youth member's involvement; unfortunately, we will not have the needed time to carry out the task. With that said, our success can be determined through the mentioned qualitative measures throughout the project
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
| Action Item | Deliverable | Dates | Accountable |
| Weekly Updates | Facebook group, Report E-mail, and Wikipage(Paragraph or Bullet points) | Ongoing | Each team member is accountable; project sponsor to be involved |
| Technical Meeting Attendance | Facebook group, Google Docs | Ongoing | Each team member is accountable |
| 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 |
| Communication with community partner (updates and issues) | E-mail and phone call | Weekly/Ongoing | Representative from our team is in charge to write and communicate with the partner regarding our plan to partner |
| Updates and concerns to the Teaching group (communication with TA) | Email/Tutorial Session/Wikipage | Weekly/Ongoing | One or two team members update the TA regarding the progress and concerns about the project |
Milestones
| Milestone | Event or Deliverable | Target Date | Responsibility | Members In Charge |
| Milestone 1 | Proposal Presentation | Wednesday, Oct 1st | Finishing up powerpoint and prepare for the presentation | Willy, Heather, Ruth and Grace |
| Milestone 2 | Written Project,
Charter, and Proposal |
Saturday, October 4th, 11:59 PM | Meeting on thursday and finish writing the charter and upload it on connect | Jerry, Jung Soo, Karimah and Joy |
| Milestone 3 | Recruiting student and start to work with Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House | Saturday, October 18th | Visit Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House for an event and recruit students for our workshop/ Volunteering for CSL hours | Everybody |
| Milestone 4 | Revised Proposal due | Saturday, November, 1st | Submit the revised proposal based on TA's feedback | Everybody |
| Milestone 5 | Herb Garden Making Workshop | Wednesday, November 12th | All members must contribute equally and actively
Meetings should be held prior to workshop for rehearsal |
Everybody |
| Milestone 6 | Final Presentation | Wednesday, November 26 | Meeting should be held to practice before the final presentation | Everybody |
| Milestone 7 | Final Report | Wednesday, December 3rd, 11:59 PM | Meeting should be held to discuss and finish writing the final report | Everybody |
Approvals
The following individuals hereby approve this Project Charter:
| Role or Title | Name | Date (D/M/Y) |
| Member | Grace Bu | 01/11/14 |
| Member | Ruth Novak | 01/11/14 |
| Member | Jerry Sun | 01/11/14 |
| Member | Jung Soo Kim | 01/11/14 |
| Member | Joy Wang | 01/11/14 |
| Member | Willy Hariando | 01/11/14 |
| Member | Karimah Naguib | 01/11/14 |
| Member | Heather Ma | 01/11/14 |
| Community Partner | Frog Hollow Neighborhood House | 12/10/14 |
| Teaching Assistant | Kieran Findlater | 04/10/14 |
References
Chow, M, personal communication, October 20th, 2014
Creswell, J. W. (2003). Research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method approaches. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications. (pp. 3-23)
FarmFolk CityFolk. (2011), "Get Local." Retrieved October 29th 2014, From http://www.getlocalbc.org/
Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House. (2011), Mission & Value Statement. Retrieved October 22nd 2014, From http://www.froghollow.bc.ca/mission-value-statement
Kodish, S., & Gittelsohn, J. (2001) Symtematic Data Analysis in Qualitative Health Research: Building Credible and Clear Findings. Sight and Life, 25 (2), 52-56.
Klavinski, R. (2013), "Benefits of Eating Local Foods." Retrieved October 29th 2014, From http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/7_benefits_of_eating_local_foods
Kreiter, T. (2010). Build an Herb Spiral. Saturday Evening Post, 282(2), 39-40.
Ruxton, C. (2013). Emerging evidence of tea benefits. Nutrition Bulletin, 38(3), 287-301.
Trochim, W. (2006). "Research Methods: Knowledge Base." Retrieved October 29th 2014, From http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/questype.php