What's going on?
May 2, 2008
Colleen Burrows and Drew Betz presented information about Community Food Assessments and the Whatcom County CFA to the Agroecology and Sustainable Agriculture class at WWU. This class is instructed by Gigi Berardi. During the class the students expressed their ideas of meanings of terms to do with the topic, such as “food system”, “food security”, “food insecurity”, “hunger”, “local food”, “culturally-appropriate food”, and “emergency food”. Interesting discussions came up with this activity since these terms can mean different things to different people.
The students of this class were also given an assignment to collect information about food production in Whatcom County. They divided into groups to tackle different aspects of food production in the region. We are looking forward to learning what they find out!
April 10, 2008
Kathleen Saunders, Drew Betz, Colleen Burrows, Kelly Alleen, and Azad Saunders presented the work of the Whatcom CFA at the WWU Festival of Scholarship. Audience members were from areas outside of the region (New York, Vermont) and had questions that helped stimulate discussion within the CFA steering committee.
February 25, 2008
A community input meeting was held at St. Luke’s Education Center to gather comments about the proposed indicators and goals for the Whatcom County Community Food Assessment. Approximately 80 community members participated including farmers, food retailers, gardeners, community members interested in food-justice and environmental issues, anti-hunger advocates. We also had a Spanish speaking table. Several attendees were interested in participating further in the assessment. This meeting also served as a networking event; a great energy was felt as community members met others interested in similar areas of the food system. It is great to know that there are so many people in our community that are passionate about making the Whatcom County food system function in a more sustainable way.
About 35 students from Kathleen Saunders’ class assisted in many ways during the event (check in, coordination, table set-up, taking notes) and they were also responsible for transcribing from the electronic voice recorders that were set up at each table. Snacks were donated by Community Food Coop, Nature’s Path, and Rudy’s Pizza.
Fall 2007
Kathleen Saunders class has been busy helping out with the Community Food Assessment! They have found and mapped the locations of food outlets in Whatcom County and categorized these outlets by type (restaurant, grocery, convenience store, etc). Another group at WWU is busy producing a map with all of these outlets. This will help to determine locations of potential food deserts in our county.
Fall 2007
The steering committee for the Whatcom County CFA has been formed. Members are from diverse backgrounds – farming, health, social justice, etc. This group is ambitious and has been developing indicators (based on the California Vivid Picture Project) for the food system in Whatcom County. A logic model has been developed as well as a vision statement for the CFA.
September 25, 2007
One day training for the Whatcom County CFA was held at St. Luke’s Education Center. Colleen Donovan from Heifer International funded a consultant from Alabama (Keecha Harris) to lead the training. We looked at the results for the initial survey to learn about priorities of the food system in our community. While this survey was distributed among a limited number of people, we were still able to gain interesting information.
We learned about taking an assets based approach to the CFA and the importance to community building that this develops. We learned about ways to be inclusive of a diverse range of community members and developed a list of people that should be involved. From this meeting, we built a team of people who were able to be involved on a steering committee. Additional funding for lunch and snacks was provided by the Mary Redman Foundation.
Late Summer 2007
Planning for a one-day training session. Drew Betz, Colleen Burrows, and Colleen Donovan worked to bring together a diverse range of parties interested in the local food system and developed an agenda for the training session. One of the most fun parts of the planning was finding local food to serve at the event!
May 2007
Drew Betz and Colleen Burrows organized a meeting of potentially interested people to talk about the prospect of performing a Community Food Assessment in Whatcom County. Approximately 20 people attended. Colleen Donovan from Heifer International presented information about Community Food Assessments and led an activity to help us understand important issues in our community. Participants expressed their level of interest in participating further in the CFA.