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Toward Food System Sustainability through School Food System Change : Think&EatGreen@School and the Making of a Community-University Research Alliance Rojas, Alejandro; Valley, Will; Mansfield, Brent; Orrego, Elena; Chapman, Gwen E.; Harlap, Yael

Abstract

This paper describes the theoretical and conceptual framework and the research and practice model of Think&EatGreen@School, a community-based action research project aiming to foster food citizenship in the City of Vancouver and to develop a model of sustainable institutional food systems in public schools. The authors argue that educational and policy interventions at the school and school board level can drive the goals of food system sustainability, food security, and food sovereignty. The complex relationship between food systems, climate change and environmental degradation require that international initiatives promoting sustainability be vigorously complemented by local multi-stakeholder efforts to preserve or restore the capacity to produce food in a durable manner. As a step towards making the City of Vancouver green, we are currently involved in attempts to transform the food system of the local schools by mobilizing the energy of a transdisciplinary research team of twelve university researchers, over 300 undergraduate and graduate students, and twenty community-based researchers and organizations working on food, public health, environmental and sustainability education.

Item Metadata

Title
Toward Food System Sustainability through School Food System Change : Think&EatGreen@School and the Making of a Community-University Research Alliance
Creator
Rojas, Alejandro; Valley, Will; Mansfield, Brent; Orrego, Elena; Chapman, Gwen E.; Harlap, Yael
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Date Issued
2011-05-24
Description
This paper describes the theoretical and conceptual framework and the research and practice model of Think&EatGreen@School, a community-based action research project aiming to foster food citizenship in the City of Vancouver and to develop a model of sustainable institutional food systems in public schools. The authors argue that educational and policy interventions at the school and school board level can drive the goals of food system sustainability, food security, and food sovereignty. The complex relationship between food systems, climate change and environmental degradation require that international initiatives promoting sustainability be vigorously complemented by local multi-stakeholder efforts to preserve or restore the capacity to produce food in a durable manner. As a step towards making the City of Vancouver green, we are currently involved in attempts to transform the food system of the local schools by mobilizing the energy of a transdisciplinary research team of twelve university researchers, over 300 undergraduate and graduate students, and twenty community-based researchers and organizations working on food, public health, environmental and sustainability education.
Subject
Food citizenship; Food security; Food sovereignty; Food system sustainability; School food; Education; Community-based action research; Community-engaged scholarship
Genre
Article
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2019-04-04
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
CC BY 3.0
DOI
10.14288/1.0377809
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/69453
Affiliation
Continuing Studies; Land and Food Systems, Faculty of; Teaching, Learning and Technology, Centre for (Distance Learning)
Citation
Sustainability 3 (5): 763-788 (2011)
Publisher DOI
10.3390/su3050763
Peer Review Status
Reviewed
Scholarly Level
Faculty
Rights URI
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

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Rights

CC BY 3.0