CANDO Webinar: Strengthening Indigenous Communities Through Food Projects

Food projects produce more than food. They also provide opportunities for employment, youth engagement, and deeper integration with community projects. On February 23 and 25, Growcer took part in the Cando Links to Learning webinar series to share how community food projects go beyond food.

Cando (Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers) is the only national organization that focuses on education and professional development for economic development officers (EDOs) working in Indigenous communities or organizations.

Over the course of two days and four webinars, Growcer’s head project consultant Branavan Tharmarajah sat down with four different community leaders, from an Elder in Squamish First Nation to farm operators from Norway House Cree Nation to consultants working in Indigenous communities, to discuss how they leverage food projects in their communities.

“The biggest impact is on the youth”

Virginia Muswagon and Ian Maxwell are co-managers of Life Water Gardens (Pimâtisiwin Nipî Kistikânihk), the Growcer project in Norway House Cree Nation. Together they plan, seed, harvest, and distribute the produce to the local community - either directly to community members or through the school and local store.

When Maxwell took this past year off to receive cancer treatment, Muswagon’s family stepped in to help in the container garden from time to time. He’s now recovered and will be returning to help, but spoke to all the work that goes on behind the scenes so the project could blossom to the success it is today.

“I can’t say enough about what Virginia has done. During the York Boat Days she created a lot of excitement . . . she made sure all the [food] booths were using the produce for all their burgers [and other foods],” Maxwell shares. “She [also] made kale-Saskatoon berry smoothies and we couldn’t get enough of that.”

The smoothies were a hit - especially among the youth. “The kids really liked it,” Muswagon adds. It didn’t stop with smoothies either, Muswagon says the biggest impact of the entire project has been on the youth.

“The biggest impact is at Helen Betty Osborne [Ininiw Education Resource Centre] . . . [where] 600 to 700 students are consuming our produce every day,” Muswagon says. The local school has 1,500 students, a vast majority of which are Indigenous. Students are able to visit the cafeteria starting in grade 6, and older students in grades 9 and up help in the cafeteria occasionally preparing salads, sandwiches, soups, and other meals.

Older students help in the cafeteria occasionally preparing salads, sandwiches, and soups.

“We need to introduce this [healthy eating] at that age or even younger, but grades 6 to 12 is when I think they can start going to the cafeteria and they can get a salad or a sandwich. These things look so good . . . and the chef there is really happy with our produce . . . if you can see it, it speaks for itself,” Muswagon says.

In addition to adding fresh produce to meals, the chef at the school experiments with other tasty options such as preserving spinach to make spinach dip and cooking fresh herbs into the soup. Muswagon also says that some of the teachers have shared their own recipes for how to cook the uncommon vegetable of bok choy and Maxwell shares a story of one child who can’t get enough of their pac choi.

“It’s a myth to say that young people won’t be interested in salad, or pac choi and noodles, or other leafy greens. They’re very excited about it,” Maxwell says.

Growing their skills

For Maxwell and Muswagon, another big topic of their webinar discussion was their experience growing. They share that neither have formal degrees in botany or business management, but learn on the go with the support around them.

“In the beginning we called practically three times a day, but after a year, we call once a week maybe,” Muswagon says. “We know now if there’s a problem, we know what to do. If we can’t figure out what to do Drew is there, Tiffany is there.”

Virginia Muswagon says she went from calling the Growcer team three times a day to once a week as she gained experience growing.

Drew and Tiffany are members of Growcer’s customer success team. In addition to providing training in-person after an installation, they and various other members of the customer success team work alongside projects to keep operations running smoothly. From early calls to decide on seed selection or a distribution strategy to helping troubleshoot surprises along the way, each Growcer partnership has a go-to contact to unlock growing for anyone.

“Anybody can do this, but it is quite a lot of hard work and you have to roll with the punches. There may be some surprises but all in all, it’s a really cool thing to do and everyone thinks it’s cool,” Maxwell says. “When you get your hands on the fresh produce and taste it, you know it’s a good thing for your community in general. It’s really easy to get excited and pumped about [this project].”

For Muswagon, she was worried at first when she started. She shares how she had been away from work for 13 years and still had her youngest child at home, but took the leap to work part-time. “It’s peaceful when I go there, I like sitting in the container and seeding, playing my music, it’s relaxing,” Muswagon adds.

Watch the full Cando Links to Learning webinar with Virginia Muswagon and Ian Maxwell.

Alleviating community stress

Jackie Gonzales is the Elder in Residence at Ayas Men Men Child and Family Services in Squamish First Nation. They have several food projects on site, with plans to add more.

Ayas Men Men Child and Family Services have a medicine garden and hot meals distribution program, with plans to create a community pantry and kitchen in addition to adding a Growcer project.

Since 2014, a medicine garden has grown fresh vegetables and serves as a site for traditional teaching. They are also in the midst of adding a Growcer container to be able to continue sharing produce from their garden year-round. In the near future, they plan to develop a pantry so community members can access any food supplies they need and establish a community kitchen, where families will be able to come together and cook meals twice a week.

For Gonzales, all these projects tie into building the food sovereignty of the community. She shares that the coronavirus pandemic coupled with the California wildfires sounded the alarms for longer term solutions. “For me, I really feel we need to be food sovereign completely,” Gonzales says.

“When we explored the Growcer we were so excited. Can you imagine growing thousands of pounds of fresh produce a year? That’s amazing,” Gonzales says. “I think what’s more amazing is that educational piece.”

Ayas Men Men Child and Family Services has youth ambassadors who are young people aged 13 to 18 that sign up to be involved in a variety of activities. The youth ambassadors work in the medicine garden, planting, weeding, watering, and ultimately, helping prep the food to share to the community membership. They learn life and survival skills, such as how to start a fire or leave land with zero-trace, and Squamish culture and traditions. Gonzales shares how youth ambassadors learn to make teas, soaps, among other goods, from the garden, to sell as a fundraising initiative or to give freely to the community.

While the community garden runs many activities for young people, Gonzales says their food projects also attract the attention of older generations in the community too.

“Surprisingly, I would say more than half of the participants who show up every month are pensioners, elders . . . it didn’t matter if it was raining or what, they arrived,” Gonzales says, adding that over time these became social visits that members could count on. The food programs gave older community members the chance to be part of a social network, and Gonzales shared that many would volunteer to be committee members for the various projects such as kitchen, and soon-to-be pantry and Growcer projects.

“The food programs gave older community members the chance to be part of a social network.”

Overall, the projects so far work to have a positive “mellowing” impact on the community. “From there, it’s only a spinoff, because you can teach the canning, fishing, it has such a big ripple effect,” Gonzales says. “And if people aren’t hungry, if they’re not starving, they’re not going to be so ‘aggressive,’ they’re going to mellow out because their body is going to receive nutrients.”

Throughout the webinar, Gonzales shares the learning curve that Ayas Men Men underwent as they figured out distribution logistics, ran community surveys, and accessed nutrition-based funding opportunities. Gonzales adds that the key to success for any of their projects is “really good communication,” before adding that it’s also important to budget for upgrades, like greener packaging, as a project evolves over the years.

Watch the full Cando Links to Learning webinar with Jackie Gonzales.

Planning a project that works for you

Geena Jackson is a director at Nation Build Group and previously worked as the economic development officer for Squamish Nation for 13 years. She worked closely with Gonzales and the team to develop many projects over the years, including the latest Growcer project.

“We’re not a rural nation, we are right next to Park Royal mall. There’s about 4,100 members, but there is a need in every community to have food, to have fresh vegetables,” Jackson says, when referring to Squamish’s partnership with Growcer. “It’s about promoting health, it’s about promoting community, getting people involved in learning how to grow, and having that community hub.”

“It’s about promoting health, community, getting people involved in learning how to grow, and having that community hub. ”

There are many different options for how to set up a food project. Jackson lists several possibilities, like creating a community food subscription box, or splitting the harvest between donations and selling to local grocery stores or farmers’ markets.

“You can get 50 to 70 boxes every single week, whether it’s January, February, March, April, and this can be in conjunction with your community garden,” Jackson says, adding that you can build donations into the model so that your project serves to increase the overall health and wellness of a community.

“Nothing is templated, every nation is different, and the needs of the nation are different. So whether it’s sustainability of food, half economic growth, or full economic growth for this project, everything can be customized,” Jackson says.

With nothing templated, knowing the goals becomes a critical factor for success. Growcer’s head project consultant Branavan Tharmarajah shares that when working with economic development officers, health directors, or community champions, the first conversation is one of the most important.

“From my experience working with communities, it’s the initial conversation . . . Once you have those initial conversations, it becomes easy to understand if the project is more for education or for sustainability, or a bit of both,” Tharmarajah says. “But once you have those conversations, we can support you and figure out what makes the most sense for you and pull from what we’ve seen other communities do.”

For example, some preliminary research you might do for a Growcer project includes having conversations with the community about where the produce could go, scoping out a location site for the technology (i.e. is there a plug for power and garden hose or connection to water?), and researching different funding opportunities. Jackson says doing the research ahead of time allows you to present all the information for decision makers to decide if they will move forward.

Jackson also added that there’s grant money currently available until the end of March and that Nation Build Group works with many communities to find funding opportunities, treaty and non-treaty, that are fits for projects. In her experience, it takes no more than 90 days to hear back from a funding source.

“I love my job and it’s allowed me to work with 150 amazing nations and different cultures and governmental structures, but my love is the sustainability of food, water, and housing, and thinking out of the box,” Jackson says.

Watch the full Cando Links to Learning webinar with Geena Jackson.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way”

Jacques Marion and Paul Pospisil are two consultants who supported Growcer projects in northern Manitoba, one in Norway House Cree Nation and more recently, one in Mathias Colomb Cree Nation. Marion is an economic development consultant at BDO Consulting and Pospisil is a partner at BDO Consulting.

They both spoke to the ability of food projects to provide employment, develop community engagement, and add to health and school programs. As consultants, they work with community champions at the outset of any project, helping to determine feasibility and capacity within a community. Consultants and the Growcer team work with you to talk about what they’ve seen success with, calculate the breakeven for a project, and continue to be there through the implementation and execution of the growing project.

This assistance doesn’t come at a cost and there’s no fee for advice.

“This is about bringing healthy food to communities and individuals and we can’t lose sight of that for a fee. It’s not a consideration at the onset,” Marion says.

“No matter what the local situation is, there’s always an ability. Where there’s a will there’s a way,” Marion says. “If there is anything out there - funds wise - that can help assist a community in bringing such a terrific growing food system to increase the health component in the community, we’re always up for a challenge.”

“No matter what the local situation is, there’s always an ability. Where there’s a will there’s a way.”

Marion adds that they’ve seen funding work to bring big projects to a community that didn’t initially think it was possible. BDO’s approach is to tap into every opportunity at every level - municipal, provincial, federal - to improve health for members, youth and elders in a community.

“In a lot of communities, in the planning for a program, youth is a big consideration because youth want to be engaged,” Pospisil says. “The youth are now more energy conscious, looking to be more green, [and] looking to bring gardening back into the community. And the Growcer is one of those avenues to bring this back.”

“We find that the youth are more susceptible to embrace new ideas, like this type of technology,” Marion adds. “The end result is that there’s a healthy alternative in the community.”

Marion and Pospisil also add that the youth tend to easily pick up “the technological tools” to promote what’s growing across social media. Beyond learning how to grow plants indoors, young people are familiarizing themselves with business management and marketing for a food business.

“[The youth] market the output of a Growcer very creatively, and you can see exactly what kind of skillset the youth pick up doing this type of marketing. I’ve been extremely impressed with what I’m seeing,” Marion shares.

People are at the very core of a community food project’s success.

“The common success factor we see is we have a handful of community members who enjoy food, gardening, helping folks in the community . . . Jackie, Ian, Virginia, they are primary reasons why the projects are so successful,” Tharmarajah with Growcer says. “There’s a handful of community members who take it upon themselves to help other people in the community and they take pride in that, and that’s one of the biggest factors of success.”

Watch the full Cando Links to Learning webinar with Jacques Marion and Paul Pospisil.

summary

• Food projects are wellness initiatives that provide food, opportunities for engagement, and peace of mind for communities, in addition to being economic development opportunities if that is a goal of a community.
• Food projects have the ability to have a positive impact on youth, from exposing them to different ways of eating healthier to allowing them to flex their tech savvy skills when promoting community food projects.
• Conversations are the first step to starting a food project and come at no cost.
• Good communication and seeking support from others helped each community leader pull off projects that are greater than themselves for the benefit of the community.