Spending Trends at Pacific Community Resources Society

Summary

The Pacific Community Resources Society (PCRS) provides hundreds of meals a week at their Broadway Youth Resource Centre (BYRC) and would like to source healthy, local foods. Students working on this project will review BYRC receipts, compile the data, and identify current spending trends and opportunities for local, healthy sourcing. The PCRS office is conveniently located along the millennium skytrain line and students must be able to schedule meetings during office hours (Monday to Friday from 8:30-4:30). This project is especially relevant if you’re majoring in food market analysis, food nutrition and health or food, nutrition and health and/or who to learn more about food environments, business, and budgeting.  For this project, you need to be able to manage large amounts of data to identify patterns. The PCRS provides a wide range social, health, education, employment and life skills services to vulnerable people in the greater Vancouver area, and throughout the project, you’ll have the opportunity to work with and learn from staff at this award winning non-profit society.

Full Project Description

Spending Trends at Pacific Community Resources Society

Organization name: Pacific Community Resources Society

Mission of organization: Our vision is ‘Everyone thriving in strong, healthy communities.’ Our mission is ‘Inspiring healthy and inclusive communities through leadership and collaboration’.

Description of project opportunity: Our agency has over 200 staff from Vancouver to Chilliwack and we provide a lot of food. Our Broadway Youth Resource Centre provides hundreds of meals a week. Our question is what type of food are we spending money on? Our goal is to spend money on local, healthy food but we first want to know where we are currently spending money on food. This project is a review of receipts for BYRC programs food budgets. After the information is found in the finance records, they will be complied and then aggregated into a report.

Skills required: Review large amounts of data, look for themes and create reports.

Skills to be developed through the opportunity: Working in an office environment, spreadsheets and discussions with staff when clarification is needed.

Project location: PCRS Head Office, 201-2830 Grandview Highway, Vancouver BC

Days of week and hours project will take place: The office is open from 8:30-4:30 Monday to Friday. Times are flexible within those hours.

Primary contact for the students:
Andrea Mears, Manager of Support Services
Email: amears@pcrs.ca
Address: 201-2830 Grandview Highway, Vancouver
Phone: 604-202-2466
Website: www.pcrs.ca

Learning outcomes:

  • create a report based on financial information
  • work comfortably in an office environment
  • review large amounts of information


Organizational Outcomes:

  • insight into how food purchases are currently being done.
  • Ideas about how much money we are spending on food
  • Ideas to move forward about trends and spending
source: https://wiki.ubc.ca/Course:LFS350/Projects/2015T1/PCRSspendingtrends