NBFSAN Minutes- October 2013
10:45-RoundtableUpdates
Mary McKenna: Sodexo Healthy Incubator project at the University of New Brunswick – hoping to serve more local food on Campus. National recipient of 2.4 million dollar Farm to School project. Looking to improve nutrition in schools and after school program.
Blair Ward: Graduate student at UNB with Mary McKenna. Going out to schools to collect some more data and interviews and success stories around food to help make local food activities the norm.
Jessica McMackin: Dietitian and Public Health. Partnering with United Way to offer a community food mentor program in November. Workshop on CHEFS! program with 26 community partners. There is a waiting list of 10-15 people who want to start a children’s cooking program. Training the trainer program.
Joanne Roy- Kent Food Security Coordinator- wrapping up a Gleaning Project. Partnered with Bouctouche distributor and gleaned 6 tons of food. Workshops were a part of the program. Looking to reproduce the model and document to successes. Food was available at a very low cost for a few hours of work. Literacy program partnership to help improve healthy and affordable food choices and develop reading and writing skills to shop wisely. Encourage CFMs to get involved in these projects. 3 of the individuals have now received permanent employment as a result of the program.
Estelle Drisdolle- Community Forests International. Main objective is community and economical resilience in the face of climate change. Projects in NB and East Africa. Looking at food and permaculture. Projects to restore land for farmers. Many workshops are offered.
Rebekah Frazer Chiasson- Outgoing coordinator of Northumberland CIN. Community Fresh Box has had a lot of success. Her family farm is hosting a World Food event on October 26 at Pleasant Ridge at Rogersville. Pig roast and celebration of local food.
Diane Savoie – Finishing of a Community Food Mentor program in Shediac. The GDDPC are exploring collective kitchen resources and models to ensure community kitchens can run sustainability in NB. Evaluating 2 collective kitchen manuals (one from NB and one from Québec). Soup Sisters and Broth Brothers program is being explored in the Cocagne area. Profits generated from the program fundraiser return to the community program of your choice. Slow food convivium started in the Cocagne area and they just celebrated. Workshops in the works: lactofermentation, cider making. Preserving equipment has been purchased through a grant and will be available to the community. Ketchup making workshop is in the works.
Serge La Rochelle: Working with children these last few years around gardening in the school yard. At École Mathieu Martin, they are getting a garden going in the spring. ½ dozen schools in the area have started in the Cocagne area. Permaculture demonstrations to occur.
Lucie Chiasson. Regional wellness consultant working to support food security in her region. Working with Community Fresh Box.
Micha Fardy- United Way. Working with Westmorland Albert Food Security Action Group. Creating “A place for food” to move from a food charity model to a food center model. Mobilizing community food mentors in the region. In the middle of the next funding round and is looking forward to seeing how projects are reflecting efforts to improve food security in the region.
Janet Hamilton- Mapleton Teaching Kitchen- Collective kitchen and teaching kitchen are operating and well supported. Teaching kitchen for kids over the summer and kids really enjoyed it. Working with West End Food Bank to help harvest their tomatoes and transform it into product for the food bank clients. Supporting to food box program. One pot meal program is starting. The program is for individuals with limited equipment to help people learn how to cook a wholesome meal using only one pot. Planning to create a cookbook out of the program. Crockpot is provided to promote full attendance.
Clara Leblanc. Replacing Greg Sweetland with the Department of Agriculture.
Working as a development officer and is helping producers to be viable in business. A lot of focus on value-added products as there is increased demand. She is working on over 40 projects across NB.
Sean Sullivan- HEPAC- 24 Wellness networks across the province. Newest one is Memramcook. Getting ready to promote the Parks in Motion trails. Goal is to double participation to 40 events in communities. HEPAC webinars are ongoing. This month in on Bien Vivre - Live Well (30min webinars). Webinars run every month. CHEFS! Resources were distributed across the province to help support CHEFS! programs/use of tool. Survey of Wellness Networks will proceed. Helped to promote Wellness Week. Participated in Energy drink dialogue last week.
Deborah Wybou- Retired from the Multicultural Council. Has taught cooking for many years. Here as a volunteer consultant. Working with Roxana this summer.
Hannah Westner- With Department of Healthy and Inclusive Communities. Happy to see how the network is evolving. Working with the food banks across the province since January to see how to help move from a charity model to a community capacity building model. Working with Policy Branch since September on poverty reduction.
Mary: Dietetic intern from UPEI helped with a CHEFS program in Chipman. Presently involved with Community Food Mentor program in Fredericton. Bonnie Stokes in Woodstock area will be starting a CFM program in November. CFMs are partaking with cooking sessions in community kitchen at the Fredericton Food Centre. Learning a lot from the multicultural groups in the city. An exchange of knowledge and teaching is occurring as everyone cooks together.
11:45- What does theNBFSANdo... and how do we promote growth throughout the network?
Deborah Wybou has been meeting with Roxana over the summer to get a good concept of where the NBFSAN is and helped her with mind mapping.
Developing a strategic plan:
Step 1- Get organized, Step 2, Take Stock, Step 3: Set Direction, Step 4: Refine and Adopt the plan, Step 5 Implement the plan.
What is the purpose of a provincial network?
- Making connections
- Spreading the activities- A base of activities that can be influence by what’s happening in the network
- Promote healthy and equitable actions
- Promote principles
- Website- portal for information and program
- Refer people to the website for links, reference, means of communication.
- Provide ideas of what can be done
- Collaborating between groups doing projects. The network can help to promote collaborating in mutually beneficial ways. Network to make projects more viable.
- Efforts on common based on themes- ½ days are allocated to these discussions at provincial meetings.
- Brings together people from different groups and allows for cross-pollination of ideas. Helps to bring together concepts
- The network can serve to help improve understanding of how resources can be identified and better allocated
- Policy is missing in the strategic planning
- Advocacy doesn’t make sense for a network, but a network can organize networking among policy issues.
Promotional material for the network in the works:
- Pamphlets (10 ways to eat local, 10 ways to take action, 10 ways)
- Development of the website
- Videos-pictures
1:00- Slow Food Presentation
***PowerPoint Presentation***
Maxime Gauvin
Co-leader of slowfood Acadie- 1 year now that the group has been formed with a “Slow and sloppy” event. International association of members and not-for-profit organizations to promote sustainable and local food. Over 80 000 members. Conviviums are local food movement. They participate and organize events and activities.
· Support good, fair, clean (for producers and the people)
· Support local food
· Defends the right to enjoying food
· Education
· Gatherings (terra Madre)
· Protect biodiversity (catalogue of traditional food products of cultural and heritage values –“art of taste”)
· Presidium-Effort to put these cultural and heritage varieties of foods back into products.
· Annual members assembly. Annual event. Next activities include taste testing of good food with schools (sensorial taste testing)
Serge LaRochelle- The Full-Cycle Schoolyard
Ecological landscape- project in Blanche-Bourgeois
Creating a garden that is full circle.
Success is seen when:
· Respecting the vision of the school.
· Gain community support (consult students, teachers, and parents)
· Promote educational goals
1:30-Wellness Strategy Evaluation and Renewal
***PowerPoint Presentation***
Hannah Westner
The NBFSAN was involved in the Evaluation of the NB Wellness Strategy which has been in place since 2009. Evaluation has been ongoing through focus groups. The next strategy will be in place until 2014- 2020.
Work in 4 settings, using 5 strategic directions (partnership and collaboration, building capacity for community development, promoting healthy lifestyles, develop and support Healthy policies, surveillance/ evaluation/ research. There were numerous evaluation methods used, with numerous indicators, and various benchmarks. There have been positive results seen after the implementation of the Wellness Strategies (e.g., in schools)
Hannah has been working with the NBFSAN since 2006 and the NBFSAN was funded this year through funds that came as a result of the Wellness Fund. Funding went to coordinate the network.
Measures include self-reported health behaviors; however there will be measurement of underlying factors (e.g. BMI). Looking for trends in the metrics.
Hannah provided a page with a list of recommendation that came out of the evaluations and a handout for the group to jot down their additional feedback. Adult population recommendations are going to be developed.
Deadlines for additional feedback are due October 30th . New strategy will be drafted starting in November.
2:30- Farm to School in NB
Mathieu D’Astous: Really Local Harvest- Coop of 30 farmers and producers. Work began with the francophone community. In March, the management came together and la Récolte de Chez Nous stayed on as a supplier. Patrick Henderson was hired as a coordinator and did a study of the feasibility. Equipment for food safety and storage was purchased to be better able to supply the schools. It was a challenge to know what supply would be needed. It will be a year of learning to get the project off the ground and sustainable. Patrick has been making deliveries once a week. Looking at diversifying for next year to extend the season.
CÉ D’ICI started around 2 cafeterias, a café, and catering service. It all came together at the end of February. The mission is centered around the cafeterias, everything they do, helps to bring resources to the cafeteria. In the process of getting it implemented, they wanted to document their process to help study the social enterprise as a model to make institutional food services more accessible to local products. When they started they were aware of 3 schools doing the work. Now there are 24 schools in Francophone school district and a new school in Oromocto. There is so much growth. Schools are partnering with one another to offer food at schools where kitchens are unavailable. Reproducible toolkit box has been created to help duplicate these projects. Resources however have now been redirected from trying to duplicate the projects to supporting the great growth in projects that have occurred. Organizing it better. Sharing resources among school is essential. Collaboration is easier than competition. The logistics around getting food from the food producers to the point of storage, production, and preparation is a key barrier that needs to work. TFA (Terroir Foods)
Success with be seen with a combination of one-site production where all food is made on site to an exchange of foods from numerous productions sites (e.g. a school becomes very efficient at making a few items and exchange it with others. Possibilities are exciting. A lot of learning has occurred in the last year.
Mary McKenna- funding has been received 2.4 million dollars to promote local food in NB and a few other provinces. Models developed in BC will be adapted here in NB. 3 French and 3 English schools will be funded in similar regions. A coordinator would be hired. After school nutrition program funding for YMCA. Funding on a National conference on school nutrition. Meetings will commence in November. Food Security Canada has been looking at raising the bar for federal funds to support provincial school food programs with national standards for nutrition. Coordinator may be funded as early as 6 month.