Project Title
Building a Community Kitchen at the DTES Neighbourhood House
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
- Best day(s) to contact: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays
- Best time(s) to contact: Mornings, Afternoons
Preferred Platform(s) for Remote Collaboration
- Email, Zoom
Project Description
Note: This project will take place online and in person
Context: What challenge or issue does the project aim to address?
One of the cornerstone programs at the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood house is the Community Drop-In program every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. During program time, our multipurpose community gathering space is opened up, and a meal – oatmeal breakfast on all three days, and a diverse lunch on Monday and Wednesday - is served. Anyone is welcome to come in, have a seat, drink some coffee or tea, and eat with other community members. The goal for this program is to promote food security and community connection through a shared meal.
What students will work on during this project is an expansion of this into a community kitchen program for adults in the Downtown Eastside/Strathcona area. We have hosted community kitchen events in our commercial kitchen before, and currently have a children’s educational cooking program that operates with a community kitchen model. In Kid’s Kitchen, children age 6-12 come together with staff for two hours on Sunday afternoon every week to make lunch and a dessert. The children decide what they want to make, cook together, eat together, and clean up together at the end of the program.
The community kitchen is a well-established program model, and we see it as being a good fit with pre-existing programming at the Neighbourhood House as well as with our philosophies. This project will work to address the food security of its participants, as well as to provide a diverse, inclusive, participatory community cooking space where participants have ownership over the program and how it runs, and meaningful cross cultural community connections can be built. The role of students will be to support staff in setting up the pilot project, particularly with conducting participant opinion research during pre-existing Neighbourhood House programs. This is important so that the program can be created and launched in a way to best meet the needs of the community that already exists at and around the Neighbourhood House. If feasible, one goal is to have LFS students participate in a leadership role in the first session(s) of the new community kitchen program.
Main Project Activities and Deliverables
- Students will develop a literature review of similar projects in the immediate DTES
- Students will create a survey to gauge community opinion on this project and gather community input
- With staff, students will facilitate feedback-gathering conversations with participants of existing Neighbourhood House programs
If time permits:
- LFS students participate in a leadership role in the first session(s) of the new community kitchen program.
Student Assets and Skills (preferred or required)
- Familiarity with the DTES/Strathcona neighbourhoods (or willingness to learn)
- Commitment to working with a non-judgmental and open attitude towards the DTES considering the area's history and ongoing context of marginalization
- Familiarity with an asset-based community development perspective
- Understanding of and commitment to harm-reduction as a philosophy and practice
Are there any mandatory attendance dates (e.g. special event)?
- This project involves mandatory in person work onsite at the Neighbourhood House during program time. There are no specific dates, however CDI (community drop in program) runs Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning to early afternoon. Students will need to be onsite for some sessions to facilitate the survey.
Is a criminal record search (CRS) required?
- No
How much self-direction is expected from the students?
| Deciding on the project deliverable(s) | Mostly led by community partner, with some student input |
| 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.) | Equal leadership between students and community partner |
| Implementing the activity plan (e.g. surveying stakeholder groups) | Equal leadership between students and community partner |
| Finalizing the deliverable(s) | Equal leadership between students and community partner |
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)
- Strathcona Community Centre Food Charter
Additional Resources
- As students will be working onsite with our program participants, additional resources and training may be provided (in collaboration with the LFS 350 teaching team)
- About Community Kitchens (Fraser Health)
- Kim, S. & van Enckevort, J. (2021). Community-Centered Food Support and Care for All: Transforming Dignified Food Access in Vancouver. A Convening Grant report from Kiwassa Neighbourhood House. Vancouver: British Columbia.
- Putting your kitchen to work: A resource guide for increasing the use of publicly accessible kitchens through food based programming (2017). City of Vancouver, Department of Social Planning & Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation.
- Activating Inclusion Toolkit. UBC Equity & Inclusion Office
- Checklist for Accessible and Inclusive Event Planning and Respectful Dialogues Guide. UBC Equity & Inclusion Office
- Resilient Neighbourhoods Toolkit. City of Vancouver
- What does facilitation mean to us? Reflections from POC youth (2020). hua foundation
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
Neigbourhood house staff have an increased understanding of community participant opinion regarding community kitchens, so they can successfully launch and run a pilot community kitchen that best meets the needs of the community in and around the NH
Learning Outcomes
Through this project, I think students will learn about...
- how to build a community program through community consultation of participants
- an understanding of how grassroots community organizations like the NH run their programming and operate organizationally
- asset-based community development perspectives in the DTES/Strathcona area
- how food justice can be incorporated into community programming and disrupt the traditional charity model
By working on this project, I think students will develop skills and/or awareness of...
- systemic issues relating to food security in the DTES/Strathcona area and how community organizations work to support participants
- what a community-engaged planning process for a non profit program can look like in this context
- how community building activities and food security interlink
- social determinants of health
By the end of the project, I believe students will come to appreciate...
- how important choice, agency, and food sovereignty is in food security supports/resources in order to support the inherent dignity of participants