EYA Volunteers Help Shape Vancouver's Food Strategy

On a damp cold day in early December, an upbeat team of EYA youth volunteers assembled in the Strathcona Community Garden’s “Eco-Pavilion” to talk about food. Why were we motivated to leave the warmth of our houses on such a drab day and take time out of our weekend to talk about food of all things? Well, we were doing so in the knowledge that what we had to say was going to be heard by the City and ultimately help shape Vancouver’s Food Strategy.

The Food Policy Team over at the City of Vancouver intends to create a Food Strategy that will help Vancouver foster a “healthy, sustainable food system that benefits people, the local economy, our environment and the development of our city”. The Food Strategy will act as an official plan and contain specific goals and actions to improve our food system.

Before such a document can be drafted, the Food Policy Team needs community members’ insights into the current food system in Vancouver. In other words, they want to learn what’s working well, where the great food places and resources in our communities or “food assets” are, and what is missing or where the “food gaps” lie. This is where our group came in. We were coming together to hold a “Community Food Animation Session” in which community members hold a discussion session and then report back to the Food Policy Team with details of what came out of the “animation”.

Back in the Eco-Pavilion, we started our animation session with a bit of doodling on our “Vision Board”. The quote at the top of our board read “My ideal food system in Vancouver looks like this...” and below we did our best to capture our vision with lots of colourful drawings

(with many a person lamenting over the difficulties involved in drawing a bicycle!).

Once we had got our creative juices flowing, we gathered together to talk about our motivations for attending and our goals for the day. We decided that with such a broad topic as food, the best option was to list all the aspects of food that we were interested in and then vote to determine which two topics to focus on in our discussions. Everyone received two cake stickers to cast their votes with and pretty quickly it became clear that people were most interested in the topics of food waste/composting, education, and skills-sharing.

Having decided upon our two topics (combining education & skills-sharing into one), we were ready to launch into our activities. Our discussions were structured by considering the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and barriers in turn for both food waste/composting and education & skills-sharing as it related to the broader topic of food. We worked in small groups, jotting down our thoughts on post-it notes that we then grouped together on larger sheets. This activity allowed us to record our discussions as we went, capture thoughts from all of our participants, and readily identified reoccurring themes in our discussions.

The Food Policy Team might be pleased to hear that our volunteers had no trouble identifying a whole host of positive things that are currently happening in Vancouver with regards to food education and skills-sharing. A long list of positive resources and programs was identified, from community workshops to composting programs in schools, and from local food programs to the City Compost Hotline.

The strongest theme to emerge from our discussions about the weaknesses of education and skills-sharing in Vancouver, was the lack of communication and promotions from those offering educational workshops or programs. Several participants commented that it’s hard to know where to get started with a lot of activities relating to our food system and how to connect to skilled-individuals.

When it came to discussing the opportunities for education and skills-sharing in the city, popular suggestions included free access to spaces for community workshops, mandatory composting and food system classes in schools, building connections by producing a directory of skilled gardeners and developing a mentoring program. There were also lots of ideas on how to promote gardening knowledge via the likes of TV, Youtube, blogs, and other forms of social media.

A number of barriers to education and skills-sharing were also identified, including: lack of workshop space, issues with affordability, timing of workshops, language barriers, and apathy in city residents. We went on to discuss some of these issues in greater depth, and also examined the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and barriers to food waste/composting initiatives in the city. A full write-up on the results of discussion session can be found here.

While it was rather chilly in the Eco-Pavilion even despite the wood fire, we all had a good time sharing memories of meals, experiences of food in Vancouver, and speaking up about food issues that concern us. These Community Food Animation Sessions are just one of many activities taking place as part of the broader community consulations, before more targeted focus groups are held.

To find out how to have your say and learn more about the Vancouver Food Strategy, check out:

Website: vancouver.ca/foodpolicy

Contact the Food Policy Team: foodpolicy@vancouver.ca

Twitter: twitter.com/CoVFoodPolicy

Blog: vancouverfoodpolicy.tumblr.com

Background information about the Vancouver Food Strategy (pdf, 1.09 MB)

A big thank you to all the volunteers who shared their ideas, experiences, energy, and food! - Claire, EYA's Volunteer Coordinator