Project Title
Teaching Food Justice and Nutrition to Children in the DTES
Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House
Organization Information
Organization Name
Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House
Mission and Vision of Organization
Our Mandate
The mandate of the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House is to provide programming and educational, leadership, social and recreational opportunities to residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Our Vision
To provide a dignified welcoming space that creates and supports an improved quality of life for the DTES community.
Our Mission
The secular, grassroots Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House (DTES NH) aims to provide meaningful opportunities for our neighbours to engage with and contribute to their community in an equitable atmosphere of sharing and learning. We welcome people of all ancestries, genders, ages, and orientations. Our programming honours and is inspired by the cultural diversity of the DTES and respects the fact that most of our neighbours are coping with significant socioeconomic and/or physical limitations in their daily lives.
Given the wide-reaching effects of nutritional vulnerability in our community, the founders of the DTES NH put the Right to Food at the heart of our work. We believe that everyone deserves access to food that enhances both their physical and mental wellbeing. Through our food-centered programming, we aspire to reform the nutritional impact, quality, abundance, and delivery of food in the DTES community.
Guiding Principles + Values
Our Operating Philosophy
At the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House, we embrace our community in its entirety: its beauty and harshness, its coherence and contradictions. We challenge the labels and stereotypes that are often imposed on our neighbours, choosing instead to see complex individuals living multifaceted lives.
In planning and delivering our programs, we strive to be, among other things, compassionate, inclusive, resourceful, and fun. We steer away from a hierarchical charity model, positioning ourselves not as saviours but, rather, as neighbours. Our aim is to offer quality community programming to Downtown Eastside residents, whom we welcome as the ultimate stewards of our organization.
At the same time, we are keenly aware and respectful of the serious socioeconomic barriers and physical challenges that many in our community face. While we have a special allegiance to those neighbours, we also heartily welcome individuals with greater privilege and resources to engage with our programs and, in so doing, to foster a more equitable and empathic society.
Our Food Philosophy
We know food to be a communicative instrument and hence use its offering as an instrument of community building.
The average DTES resident lives with one or more serious health issues, has a compromised immune system and is under-housed. Coupled with extreme material poverty, the lack of adequate housing renders people incapable of providing themselves with adequate nutrition. Typical housing quarters provide one small room with no cooking facilities or storage for foodstuffs. Many of our neighbours live in Single Room Occupancy units (SROs).
The average DTES diet consists of a of starch (in the form of white rice and pasta); copious amounts of tasteless coffee garnished with coffee whitener (an addictive petroleum by-product) and refined sugar; endless soup; day old pastries and donuts; dishes made with an alarming amount of taste enhancing chemical additives; and processed foods. These ‘foods’ do not support positive health outcomes for our neighbours, but remain omnipresent in our community.
What is not found in the average DTES diet is local, seasonal, fresh produce; sweets which are healthy (eg dates and figs); dishes made without additives and refined sugars; homemade vinaigrettes; alternatives to dairy products; and generally speaking fresh, identifiable foods. These are the things that the Neighbourhood House works to make available for our neighbours.
When one is materially poor, the first things lost are privacy and choice. Offering people a choice of the foods they ingest is a critical piece of the NH food philosophy. It’s a commonly held myth that those living in poverty don’t have nutritional knowledge or aspirations.
Contact Information
- Primary Contact Person(s): Sophie Roth, She/Her
- Email: schoolsout@dtesnhouse.ca
- Phone: 604-215-2030
- Address: 573 Hastings St E
- Website: https://www.dtesnhouse.ca/
Preferred Method of Contact
- Best method(s) to contact: Email, schoolsout@dtesnhouse.ca
- Best day(s) to contact:Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays
- Best time(s) to contact: Mornings, Afternoons
Preferred Platform(s) for Remote Collaboration
- Zoom
Project Description
Note: This project can be completed online, but it would be an enhancement for all if students can come once to see our space
Context: What challenge or issue does the project aim to address?
Students should have a general awareness/understanding of the contemporary context of the Downtown Eastside / Strathcona neighborhood and how this relates to food insecurity and food systems (see Our Philosophies). This project primarily aims to address knowledge gaps in Neighbourhood House staff and volunteers in how to effectively teach topics of nutrition and food justice/right to food to children aged 6-12 in our Kids Kitchen program. Additionally, though the creation of supplementary program materials that will assist staff and volunteers in teaching, this project addresses Kids Kitchen participants' knowledge gaps, supporting self-empowerment for children who are impacted by systemic food insecurity.
Main Project Activities and Deliverables
- The end goal of this project is the creation of supplementary program materials to be used by Neighbourhood House staff and volunteers to teach food justice/right to food and nutrition to children in the Kids Kitchen program
- Materials will include example activities for staff/volunteers to conduct with the kids during program
- Students will conduct a literature review/case studies of what food justice/right to food is in practice, with a specific focus on pedagogy and how to teach these topics to children, especially those impacted by systemic food insecurity
Student Assets and Skills (preferred or required)
- Preferred: Design/art skills for the creation of the materials
- Any previous program experience in food security, children's programming, or education
- Any previous culinary or nutritional/dietetics experience
Are there any mandatory attendance dates (e.g. special event)?
- No
Is a criminal record search (CRS) required?
- No
How much self-direction is expected from the students?
- Deciding on the project deliverable(s): Led by community partner
- Developing the activity plan and timeline: Equal leadership between students and community partner
- Scheduling and initiating the communication plan (e.g. weekly Zoom check-in, biweekly email update, etc.): Mostly led by students, with some community partner input
- Implementing the activity plan: Mostly led by students, with some community partner input
- Finalizing the deliverable(s):Mostly led by students, with some community partner input
Preferred Days of Week and Hours
N/A
Related Community Service Opportunities for Students
- Students are more than welcome to volunteer at the Neighbourhood House for many different programs, including (but not limited to) community drop-in, right to food zine, and at the urban farm.
Required Reading
Project/Partner Orientation Materials
Students should review the following materials prior to the first partner meeting. Additional orientation materials may be provided at the first partner meeting.
- Research 101 : A Manifesto for Ethical Research in the Downtown Eastside (2019)
- At least 2 of the 'Shifting the Story' videos from the UBC Learning Exchange (CWL login required)
- Review 'Downtown Eastside Speaks Up!' (request PDF from your TA)
- Strathcona Community Centre Food Charter
Additional Resources
- ProjectCHEF recipes and other resources
- Soul Fire Farm food justice resources
- LFS 250 food literacy workshops/videos
- UBC NutriKids
- Community Food Centres Canada - manual for starting an afterschool program
- FoodShare Toronto community program resources
- Growing Chefs program resources
- Fresh Roots Farm educational programming information
Click here to learn about the global settlement and neighbourhood house movement. For information on neighbourhood houses in our region, visit the Association of Neighbourhood Houses (ANH) website. Note that some local neighbourhood houses are independent (not overseen by ANH), including DTES Neighbourhood House. Independent houses are not listed on the ANH website.
Expected Outcomes
Intended Short-term Project Outcome
Neighbourhood House staff and volunteers increase their knowledge of how to effectively teach topics of nutrition and food justice to elementary aged children, supporting self-empowerment of Kids Kitchen participants to understand basic nutrition and food justice/right to food
Learning Outcomes
Through this project, I think students will learn about...
- The contemporary realities of how children and families are impacted by systemic food insecurity
- Food justice and the philosophy of right to food
- Grassroots community building initiatives and their connection to food justice through comprehensive food security and nutritional education programming.
By working on this project, I think students will develop skills and/or awareness of...
- Methods that nonprofits utilize to address food insecurity from basic service provision to education to advocacy and social change
- How to design instructional/program materials
- Funding structures and program development in the context of small nonprofits.
- Putting pedagogical theory into practice
By the end of the project, I believe students will come to appreciate...
- This work taps into a number of methods of addressing food insecurity, and we hope that the students will come to appreciate the strengths (and limitations) of these distinct approaches.