1
Sowing the Seeds and Nurturing the Growth: Strengthening Capacity for Sustained Action on Food Security Across Alberta
EVALUATION REPORT 2007-08
Tammy Horne
WellQuest Consulting Ltd.
(Edmonton)
(780) 451-6145
Prepared for Growing Food Security in Alberta and Dietitians of Canada (Alberta)
June 10, 2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
METHODS
KEY LESSONS
DETAILED FINDINGS
What Did GFSA Do in 2007-08
What Stood Out for Participants for 2007-08
Workshop Highlights and Proudest Accomplishments for 2007-08
Food Security is an All-Encompassing Issue
Addressing Food Security on a Larger Scale
Food Security Specific Actions
Building Relationships
Policy Development/Systems Change
Local Leadership Development
Key Suggestions for Change from 2007-08
Building Relationships
Communication to Participants
Focus on More Than Just One Area of Food Security
Raise Awareness
Still in the Planning Stages
Summary
Participants’ Understand Continuum of Ways to Increase Food Security
Policy/Systems Change
Broad Community Engagement
Raising Awareness
Plan and Organize for Action
Summary
GFSA Seen as Food Security Resource
Inquiries by Phone
Workshop Participants
Media
Decision Makers
People Experiencing Food Insecurity
Other Organizations or Networks That Address Health Disparity Issues
Inquiries by E-mail
Website
Listserv
Summary
Participants Build Upon and Further Develop Their Skills
Skills of Participants Prior to the Project
Group Process/Relationships
Previous Experience Related to Food Security
Broad Life Skills/Experiences
Planning Skills
Communication Skills
Skills Developed through Participation in the 2008 Project
Awareness Raising
Relationship Building
Program Planning/Facilitation
Further Knowledge Development
Create Interest in Community
Summary
Participants’ Plans to Get Involved in Food Security
Roles
Relationship Building
Action-Specific Roles (Focused on Food Security)
Policy Change
Unsure of Role
Collaborators
Action Group
Broad Community
Media
Health/Social Agencies
Education Institutions
Church Groups
Political Level
Private Sector
Summary
Community Action Plans
Blood First Nation
Creating Capacity Building Initiatives for Food Security......
Being Culturally Relevant
Promoting Local Food
Developing Partnerships
Working with Policy Makers
Raising Awareness
Doing Research
Leveraging GFSA Resources
Brooks
Engaging Community
Building Relationships
Creating Capacity Building Initiatives for Food Security
Promoting Local Food
Being Culturally Relevant
Developing Partnerships
Raising Awareness
Creating Policy Resources
Leveraging GFSA Resources
Cold Lake
Engaging Community
Creating Capacity Building Initiatives for Food Security
Building Relationships
Developing Partnerships
Doing Research
Leveraging GFSA Resources
Grande Prairie
Raising Awareness
Working with Policy Makers
Engaging Community
Building Relationships
Leveraging GFSA Resources
High Level
Creating Capacity Building Initiatives for Food Security
Engaging Community
Building Relationships
Developing Partnerships
Working with Policy Makers
Raising Awareness
Leveraging GFSA Resources
Lacombe
Creating Capacity Building Initiatives for Food Security
Promoting Local Food
Doing Research
Building Relationships
Developing Partnerships
Raising Awareness
Addressing Hunger Relief
Medicine Hat
Doing Research
Promoting Local Produce
Raising Awareness
Working with Policy Makers
Lloydminster
Engaging Community
Building Relationships
Creating Capacity Building Initiatives for Food Security
Raising Awareness
Sylvan Lake
Engaging Community
Building Relationships
Creating Capacity Building Initiatives for Food Security
Developing Partnerships
Raising Awareness
Summary
Local Food Security Projects Have Public Profile
Present Year Requests
Broad Community Groups (Informal)
Media
Health/Social Agencies
Education Institutions
Church Groups
Political Level
Local Growers/Vendors
Private Sector
Future Promotional Ideas
Make Links Between Food Security and Other Issues
Have People Experiencing Food Insecurity as Spokespersons
Develop AdditionalPromotional Material
Summary
Participants Collaborate on Actions for Food Security
Present Collaborations
Health/Social Agencies
Education Institutions
Nearby Communities
Church Groups
Private Sector
Collaborations Needing Development
Health/Social Agencies
Education Institutions
Political Level
Private Sector
Collaboration Challenges
Not Recognizing the Importance of Food Security
Limited Funds
Recognize Lived Experience with Food Security
Build Relationships Before Focusing on Food Security
Summary
Broader Community Support for Local Food Security Initiatives
Decision Makers Adopt Policies that Support Food Security
Reflections on Relationship Between Communities and GFSA
What Is Going Well
Suggestions for What Could be Improved
Permanent Funding
Realistic Timelines
Provincial Movement
Connecting in Person
Addressing Inconsistent Participation
Support with Policy Change Efforts
Summary
INTRODUCTION
Growing Food Security in Alberta was launched in 2003, and has been sustained through Dietitians of Canada with funding from Public Health Agency of Canada. The following vision, mission and description of GFSA are taken from (with slight adaptation).
Our Vision
All children and families in Alberta have healthy food.
Our Mission
Engaging Albertans – groups, organizations, business, governments and individuals - in strategies to ensure secure access to adequate amounts of safe, nutritious, culturally appropriate food for everyone, produced in an environmentally sustainable way and provided in a manner that promotes human dignity (adapted from OPHA Food Security Workgroup 2002).
Description
In 2006-2007 GFSA facilitated a process called Community Building for Food Security,to help seven rural communities (a) understand and talk about the social and economic determinants of health, and (b) develop and follow through on action plans to address these issues. The official project nameis “Sowing the Seeds from the Provincial Food Security Network – Community Asset Mapping, CapacityBuilding, and Action Planning for Food Security”. The seven participating communities were High Level (HL), Grande Prairie (GP), Cold Lake (CL), Lacombe (L), the Blood First Nation (BFN), Brooks (B) and Medicine Hat (MH). GFSAassistedthese rural Alberta communities to build capacity by facilitatinga participatory community-conversation process to help community citizens:
- have a mutual understanding of what food security is,
- address the underlying root causes and the relationship to good health,
- find local solutions through the identification of resources, local alliances and partnership to enhance any existing food security initiatives and encourage new initiatives, and
- to develop plans of action specific to their community.
The Community-Building for Food Security (CBFS) workshops were based on two main resources – Community Capacity Building and Asset Mapping (Community Building Resources, 2005) and Thought About Food: A Workbook on Food Security and Influencing Policy (Food Security Projects of the Nova Scotia Nutrition Council and Atlantic Health Promotion Research Centre (2005). The first resource focuses primarily on capacity-building and related issues like how to build relationships and how to identify community assets. The second one emphasizes policy analysis and actions to influence policy – with some emphasis on community capacity-building as well. More information on the content of workshops is available at
Following the workshops, GFSA provided seed funding to each community group to help them develop their action plan. GFSA also assisted these groups through teleconferences, an in-person community facilitators’ meeting, and e-mail and telephone support as needed.
In 2007-08, GFSA supported two new communities to participate in the workshops and develop action plans. The seven communities from 2006-07 were offered a second workshop - Advanced Community-Building for Food Security (CBFS). The aim of the advanced workshops is to assist these communities as they continue to build on and develop their food security efforts while encouraging policy approaches. Because of the very short time frame for 2007-08 (January to March), GFSA focused mainly on workshops. Funding has now been extended through 2008-09, so GFSA will be able to offer ongoing support to both new and advanced communities as needed over the next year.
METHODS
Evaluation was based on a framework developed collectively by GFSA’s Evaluation Committee. This committee includes GFSA staff, Steering Committee members, community facilitators, and the external evaluation consultant. The logic model is on the next page, and the remainder of the framework (indicators and methods) are in Appendix A.
There were four main evaluation methods:
- a brief open-ended survey done at the end of each community’s workshop(in February or March);
- a teleconference with community facilitators in April;
- examination of each community’s action plans (for 2006-07 communities, ongoing work they have done since April 2007 was also included);
- administrative data collected by GFSA throughout the project.
We adapted the survey questionnaire was adapted from one that is included in the Thought About Food workbook (see Appendix B). Questions correspond to evaluation framework indicators. Fifty-seven people completed the post-workshop survey, out of 81 participants, for a response rate of 70%.
As the evaluator, I worked with GFSA staff to develop guiding questions for the teleconference. Content was consistent with the evaluation framework (see Appendix C). Six community facilitators and a research assistant took part in this call, which I facilitated.
Some indicators were revised since 2006-07. For example, instead of focusing on number of individual participants who made particular comments about what they learned in the workshops, we focused on how many communities as a whole made those comments. This better reflected how participants responded last year, when several participants from each community workshop often described factors that were important to their work as part of the group. As well, numbers of participants varied widely across communities and in some communities not all community participants attended both workshop days, making it impossible to accurately compare individual numbers across communities.
Much data analysis for outcomes was qualitative, in order to go into more depth than a simple count of types of comments. Qualitative analysis was done by coding comments into categories, then rolling up related categories into broader themes. Categories evolved throughout the coding process, through use of constant comparison whereby earlier categories are revised as new data is brought into the analysis .[1],[2]In order to satisfy different readers’ interests in qualitative and quantitative data, this report presents counts as well as themes and related categories. We also included quantitative process indicator data (outputs) collected by GFSA staff.
1
1
KEY LESSONS
This section contains the conclusions, or key lessons, from the project evaluation. The details of findings related to project outcomes and processes are discussed extensively throughout this report.
- The local food security action groups (coalitions, networks, committees)
are all involved in multiple actions in their communities. Most of these are focused at the level of capacity-building for food security, such as community kitchens, gardens, good food boxes and farmers’ markets. This is similar to last year’s emphasis. The food security continuum begins with hunger relief (such as food banks), progresses through capacity-building initiatives like the ones above, and then to policy/system change such as in the examples below.
- Community action groups are doing more work with policy makers than they were doing a year ago. For example, they are developing municipal food charters, preparing presentations for their local councils, and working with decision makers responsible for regulations related to markets and gardens. Most of the action groups see a need to focus more on policy in the future. Some also pointed out the challenges of policy work. For example, the ‘big picture’ focus is harder for many people to take than more tangible actions like hunger relief and capacity building.
- The community action groups have a broad view of food security and its connection to other issues: “I think the thing that caught my attention the most is the number of ways food security affects the population, ie. Transport, money, childcare, knowledge base, cooking skills”.
They also believe food security needs to be addressed on a broad scale – using a combination of raising awareness of food security issues, drawing on the strengths of people and organizations in the community to take action, and promoting local food.
- Building relationships is highly valued by the action groups. They speak of relationship building as a key to collaborative initiatives and the development of partnerships, as well as essential to community members staying connected beyond their initial engagement with the project. Some communities would like to see an even stronger focus on relationships in future.
- The action groups are committed to broad community engagement. This means getting and keeping people involved, and broadening the diversity of who is involved:“Instead of just a few people talking, we need to get as many different people as possible involved and start doing.” There is some overlap between engagement and relationship building, though the latter is more about how people connect with each other once they are involved.
- Building awareness is important to the community action groups. They talked about public awareness (through media and public events) as well as awareness for organizations and policy makers.
- Community action groups were committed to implementing their action plans, and finding (new) and strengthening (existing) collaborations with whom to work.
- GFSA is seen as a resource to many different types of people and organizations, ranging from local, provincial and nationally based groups. There were more media inquiries this year than last year, despite a shorter funding period, suggesting a growing credibility of GFSA as a source of food security expertise. Other types of inquiries (from workshop participants, organizations) were down this year because of the short time lines.
- Members of the action groups bring a variety of existing skills and experiences to their local. They identified skills in the following areas (examples in parentheses): group process/relationships (making connections), previous experience related to food security (such as cooking, gardening, teaching), broad life skills/experience (volunteering, parenting), planning skills (organizing), and communication skills (writing).
- Action group members also identified several types of skills developed through their involvement in the action group (including the CommunityBuilding for Food Security workshop). These are: awareness raising, relationship building, program planning/facilitation, own personal capacities for action (including learning that one’s actions make a difference), and further knowledge development (about food security).
- Of the skill development themes above, relationship building received the most attention. Action group members referred to developing relationships on a personal level, learning more about their communities through interactions, and keeping people involved over time. They later discussed making their groups broader and more inclusive:“We have lots of new members in our food security group which allows relationships with other/different people in the community. We want to start working with the collective kitchen people. We are trying to reach more people to join the food security group.” Some groups were focusing more specifically on including people who are experiencing food insecurity, and recognized the challenges of doing this.
- The relationship building theme included relationships with decision makers as well as with organizations and individuals:“We have further strengthened the advocacy piece to decision makers by having a city councilor on the Choose Well committee. We did this by having conversations with the right people and wrote a letter to the mayor.”
- Skill related themes were similar to those that emerged in last year’s evaluation. However, the focus on their own personal capacities and further knowledge development were new this year, and may reflect the further development of action group members as leaders in their communities.
- Action group members identified their main roles as building relationships, being involved in food security initiatives, and working toward policy/system change. Roles regarding food security involvement included creating awareness (through both personal interactions and resource materials), leadership (broad and project-specific), participation in events/activities, and making links with other organizations.
- The action plans for each of the nine communities have many commonalities. The most common action themes, included by at least half the communities, are: raising awareness, creating capacity building initiatives for food security, building relationships, engaging community, developing partnerships, focusing on policy (includes both working with policy makers and developing policy resources), and leveraging GFSA resources (though seeking additional funding from other sources).
- Types of potential collaborators in the local food security projects were numerous and diverse, similar to last year. Most commonly mentioned were broad community, health/social agencies, education institutions, church groups, political level and private sector. Community or collective kitchens is the most common example of actual collaboration so far, involving health/social agencies, education institutions, and/or church groups. Some local action groups have started working with groups who want to do similar work in nearby communities. The groups would likely to build more collaborative links, particularly with policy makers and education institutions.
- The most common challenge to collaboration is that not all organizations and decision makers within a community recognize the importance of food security as an issue. Action groups also stressed the need to build relationships before working on specific issues.
- Local food security action groups are developing a higher profile among organizations in their communities. They are getting more requests for information and presentations than a year ago. The types of organizations making requests were the same types that are viewed as collaborators by the local groups. There was less media coverage this year than last, likely due to the very short funding period for 2007-08.
- The time frame of this evaluation was too short to examine long-term changes in public support for local food security initiatives, or in public or private sector policies.
- Community facilitators were generally positive about the support from GFSA, particularly the opportunities to connect with the other community action groups. For suggested improvements, they would like to see more realistic timelines, a provincial food security movement led by GFSA, and more opportunities to connect face-to-face including a provincial food security conference.
- Generally, the action groups were more specific this year than last when sharing examples that fit within the themes that came up in this evaluation – such as policy, awareness and partnerships. They focused less on issues this year, and more on concrete actions. The two new communities (Lloydminster and Sylvan Lake) were more specific than the seven original communities were in their early stages, likely because the were able to learn from the experience of those communities over the last year, as well as from GFSA staff who had been working with all the communities.
- There were not substantial differences between the new communities and the original ones, except that the new communities were spending more time on planning and had not yet had the opportunity to implement those plans. The new communities were also just beginning their processes or community engagement, relationship building and partnership development. However, most of the themes that emerged over the course of the evaluation were similar for new and original communities.
- The logic model for this year’s initiative generally fit. People attended workshops and were able to describe how to work across the food security continuum. They were also able to identify their skills and how they could use those for action, though they focused less on advocacy skills than community capacity building skills. Workshop participants were able to develop an action plan, and were updating it and/or starting to implement it by March 2008 (depending on the timing of their workshop). They were developing collaborative relationships for implementing their action plans, and a few of these were already in place. As noted earlier, there was not enough time to adequately evaluate the long-term outcomes. Because of the compressed timeline, there was little distinction this year between short and intermediate outcomes. There was also no time for GFSA to implement the additional activities in the logical model to reach out to broader audiences beyond workshop participants this year, so requests to GFSA as well as media coverage was down from 2006-07.
- Many of the evaluation findings were consistent with the indicators in the evaluation framework. However, some were not. Indicators need to be revisited periodically to ensure that they reflect the types of changes that are important to and feasible for the action groups in their communities. As was the case this year, representatives of the action groups need to be involved in the ongoing evolution of the evaluation framework as this GFSA initiative continues to grow and change over time.
DETAILED FINDINGS
What Did GFSA Do in 2007-08
GFSA facilitated six two-day advanced CBFS workshops, with six of the seven original communities. One community declined the advanced CBFS workshop, because this community had previously received a two-day CommunityBuilding and Asset Mapping workshop in spring 2006 and has ongoing food security initiatives. Therefore, the GFSA project coordinator and assistant attended one of this community’s meetings to observe progress and provide input and suggestions.