CFE Day 5 - Friday, 27th April 2018.
Visit to the Community Garden atop the AMS Nest Building.
Tathali Urueta-Ortiz (PhD) provided a detailed introduction into the concept of the Community Garden. This is followed by a tour of the community open air garden on the 4th floor of the AMS Nest building managed and maintained by the student club "Roots on the Roof". There, we learnt that various crops such as herbs, kale, tomatoes, garlic, etc, are being grown and are distributed to food banks such as the UBC Food Bank and to the Community Support Agriculture (CSA) as well as to the student led restaurants "Sprouts" and "Agora" including the Market Stands on the ground floor of the Nest building. Here are six photographs that depict the community garden called Roots on the Roof on the 4th floor of the UBC AMS Nest building, just outside the UBC Osprey Occasional Childcare centre:
On reflection, the community garden is an initiative that addresses food security through community engagement. The garden itself is a functioning model of food sustainability that also serves as a conduit of connectivity in the surrounding community. Ultimately, the concept is that the garden itself is a tool or a means to an end: community cohesion for food security. It therefore provides ample opportunities for students and teachers to explore food issues in their communities such as high food prices leading to food insecurity. Social inequality is of immediate concern as it affects access to nutritious foods thus causing people to opt for cheap and convenient "foods" such as McDonald's for their children. Social inequality also entails parents working two jobs that leave them no time and energy to shop for nutritious food and to prepare them for their children. Thus the garden allows for students to identify their food issues and to study and research food nutrition in order to learn about the quality of the food they eat.
The Nest community garden itself is a model for food accessibility to students and Faculty in the UBC community. The garden creates and maintains community by connecting members of the community such as the businesses that donate the seeds to those receiving the harvest. Hence the garden makes people in the community feel connected, engages the community and receives income from the Market Stands and CSAs for its own sustainability. It also allows the students that maintain it a sense of ownership. In engaging the community, school children are afforded opportunities to connect with the food they eat such as pulling out a carrot from the ground. Such a learning experience enables them to appreciate the food they eat and not to take it for granted.
English Language Learners (ELLs) and students on an IEP would also benefit from a school based community garden such as in the case of Windermere Secondary School in Vancouver (Chong, K). Students plan their own garden clubs and are then tasked with developing their own core competency skills. Examples include ELL students from overseas connecting their gardening culture to the local gardening culture. In the process, the garden itself is a tool to create topics in oral conversations (oral language skill competency) as well as for writing observations and reflections (written language skill competency) that could involve practicing the use of adjectives and even picking up new vocabulary. The garden could also extend to English literature where students could appreciate poems read under a tree and make aesthetic connections with the community as well as to Shakespeare as an example via a Shakespeare garden drawing on the Bard's plays on nature. These are but just a few reflective examples of community connections and engagement with the garden at the very centre of such social cohesion.
The Nest community garden itself is a model for food accessibility to students and Faculty in the UBC community. The garden creates and maintains community by connecting members of the community such as the businesses that donate the seeds to those receiving the harvest. Hence the garden makes people in the community feel connected, engages the community and receives income from the Market Stands and CSAs for its own sustainability. It also allows the students that maintain it a sense of ownership. In engaging the community, school children are afforded opportunities to connect with the food they eat such as pulling out a carrot from the ground. Such a learning experience enables them to appreciate the food they eat and not to take it for granted.
English Language Learners (ELLs) and students on an IEP would also benefit from a school based community garden such as in the case of Windermere Secondary School in Vancouver (Chong, K). Students plan their own garden clubs and are then tasked with developing their own core competency skills. Examples include ELL students from overseas connecting their gardening culture to the local gardening culture. In the process, the garden itself is a tool to create topics in oral conversations (oral language skill competency) as well as for writing observations and reflections (written language skill competency) that could involve practicing the use of adjectives and even picking up new vocabulary. The garden could also extend to English literature where students could appreciate poems read under a tree and make aesthetic connections with the community as well as to Shakespeare as an example via a Shakespeare garden drawing on the Bard's plays on nature. These are but just a few reflective examples of community connections and engagement with the garden at the very centre of such social cohesion.
Submitted by Antony José Ma Junior, at UBC Vancouver, Friday 27th April, 2018.
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