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Advice for future interns – “Just Do It!”

Looking back at my internships, both this and the previous last year in Swaziland (http://m7-nicholasscotland.tumblr.com/), my advice to future interns and myself would be not to be scared and just do it!

When trying to find an internship we often hesitate and overthink everything, in school we learn about cultural sensitivity and language barriers. And yes, we have to be cultural sensitive and there will be language barriers, but as long as you present yourself in a proper manner and open to learn, follow directions and treat everyone with respect most barriers can be overcome, moreover, the power of a smile shall never be underestimated and can (almost) never be overused. When it comes to the language, interning in south San Diego we were told by many from Denmark it would be an issue not speaking Spanish, but it never was, everyone speaks English and the very few that have troubles with the dialect, sign language and smiles always save the day.

Conversely, being open and “just doing it” is important, however, as is planning and though I properly told myself the same last internship, I can only repeat myself and say planning is of the essence. One can “just do it”, when you have a plan b and c should something go wrong. Furthering this is having as much money as possible saved up before traveling, three months is a long time and money has a habit of flying out the pocket when traveling, furthermore, you are in a different country and it is sad to have money holding one back from achieving great experiences.

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Background info on  the community of Encanto

Nearing our end of our intership tenure, it is now possible to give a brief background information on the community of Encanto, based on our own experiences and a wide range of interviews conducted within the community.

The general external view on Encanto is somewhat out of sync with the real state of affairs within the community, which supports our earlier hypothesis based on teaching the children, in that Encanto in actual fact has a lot of strengths and assets.

Firstly, according to the city of San Diego retail analysis from 2015, the Encanto neighborhoods have what they call the 1 billion retail opportunity, because of the existence of a huge gap between supply and demand within the area. This gap primarily stems from unwillingness from external businesses to invest in Encanto, given its negative and stigmatized reputation. In effect, the community members have been forced to seek for groceries and goods outside the community borders, because the services are not available within the community itself – ultimately draining the area of financial resources equating to 1 billion dollars annually. However, on the flip side, this gap offers business owners a huge business opportunity given that the market is open.

Additionally, the community also possesses an abundance of cultural diversity and cultural wealth. While, complications also are attached to this diversity, it also makes the community an extremely vibrant and culturally accepting one; dispelling negative stereotypes and personal biases.  

Conclusively, the community demographics are centered around youth, seeing that the median age of the community is 29,6 years old, compared to the 34,7 of San Diego county, meaning that it’s an up and coming community with a lot of potential. Touching upon this, it was a common focus and persisting goal of the local CBOs to help further the education of this young population. In actual fact, education was usually the primary avenue through which the local CBOs would centre their community engagement.

Identifying and acknowledging these qualities and strengths within the community, and in turn building upon them – in effect building capacity within the community was a central theme among these organizations. Instead of using a deficit model, an asset model was used, which centres around using positive reinforcement instead of focussing on all the negative aspects of the community. In addition, different degrees of participatory approaches to community engagement were used by all the different organizations. A perfect example of this was when the local plaza, The Market Creek Plaza, was designed and erected in 2012. The most dominating CBO involved in the project was the Jacobs Center for Neighbourhood Innovation (JCNI), who established 8 design teams, consisting of numerous community members, as to give the community a voice and a sense of stewardship and ownership of the project. The product of this approach can clearly be seen throughout the plaza, where the architecture and décor visibly reflects the immense cultural diversity that exists within the community, including African, different Asian, South American inspirations among others. Furthermore, it was the vision of JCNI and collaborating organizations/stakeholders, that the plaza should primarily have local businesses and staff. While, the local businesses has yet to establish themselves, more than 90% of the staff originates from the local community, in turn providing jobs and income for the community. The plaza has also managed to attract nationwide mainstay business chains to the plaza, like “Food 4 less”, “Subway”, and “Starbucks” to name a few. This could be a step in the right direction in terms of attracting external businesses to the community in order to fill the “Gap”, discussed earlier between supply and demand that exists within Encanto. However, it is important to note and understand the potential crucial impact generating more local businesses would have, both within the plaza as well as within the community itself, towards improving the financial landscape of the area. The return on having more local businesses is multifaceted and would have a myriad of benefits.

Some of the challenges that the JCNI faces, is the management of the plaza, being that the JCNI has allocated 5 years for the upstart and supervision of the erection of the plaza. This means that during 2017, the community themselves will have take over the management of the plaza, with all that that entails. Talking to Sandra Ainslie from JCNI, the transition marks a key challenge for the organization, and is something they are working hard to make as smooth as possible.

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Experiences received teaching at the Earthlab (EL)

The teaching experiences we made at the EL came in connection with what is called the Diamond Educational Excellence Partnership (DEEP) summer program. The DEEP program is a community-based summer learning program that was created in partnership with a host of local CBO’s including Groundwork, San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD), Jacobs Center for Neighbourhood Innovation (JCNI) to name but a few. Each year, this program offers the opportunity for 84 children from the community to further themselves in; reading skills, reading motivation, social-emotional development, physical health and many more.

Some of these children definitely came low SES level backgrounds, and had families who might not have had the means or time to take the children on vacations etc. during the summer period. This absolutely have given the program a true added quality for many of the children in that it offered a constructive sense of purpose during the summer. This was very evident in merely observing the children arriving at the EL every morning, where it was not perceived by the children as a forced upon school activity, but rather as something that was exciting and the children were genuinely excited to be there and eager the get started with the activities of the day, and learn.  

Much can be learned through working with children, simply because they haven’t been polluted or affected by different agendas, points of interests or other political influences and generally speak and express exactly what comes to mind. In this connection, it was possible to get a true feel for the community through its youngest members and to see things from their perspective. In actual fact, coming into Encanto, it’s somewhat tainted name had superseded it, namely as being a somewhat hard, crime ridden and poverty stricken neighbourhood. However, experiencing Encanto for what it really was, it was evident that it also had so much potential, qualities and strengths as well, something that generally speaking was lost when hearing about the neighbourhood through mainly external sources.

These qualities could definitely be seen through the children, who for the most part were extremely well behaved, and were very passionate about the different activities, and topics at the EL. In fact, after having experienced EL and the teaching sessions there, many of the children took the initiative to go and collect up trash outside the EL. Others provided their own brilliant and inspired solutions to some of our most pressing and urgent issues regarding climate change and renewable energy sources. These solutions were also seen through the scientific illustrations that they made, where they got a chance to put pencil to paper and actually design and draw some of their own solutions. It was truly inspiring to see the passion amongst these children, to find ways to address these issues, and many even said that they wanted to be environmentalists when they grew up.

One focal point of the teaching, set up by our internship host, the head of education at the EL, was to address the children as being either scientists, environmentalists, designers, engineers etc. This instilled in the children, a particular kind of feeling where the children felt that achieving these sort of titles absolutely could be possible, despite normally being in an environment otherwise not known for having a lot of children go to college.

Having the ability to witness the impact of the education given at the EL was giving, but actually teaching the curriculum to the children and knowing that you had an influence on the children, was truly priceless.

Groundwork’s view on the matter is that the education given to the children would inevitably spread to their homes and ultimately to their families. However, they wanted to include the families even more, and give the opportunity for the parents/families to experience the very same curriculum and experiments/activities as the children had undergone. Therefore, every second week the parents/families were invited to join in on the classes at EL. In effect, this offered a multifaceted approach to education within the community, ultimately having the potential to have a more widespread and expansive impact.

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Here’s the final video from the BLUM internship tenure, a summer program for UCSD (University California San Diego) students, which took place at the Earthlab. Gives a good insight into everyday life at the Earthlab while giving different perspectives from key members of Groundworks and others.

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A few observed initial opportunities and challenges connected to community gardens.

Based on our tenure at Groundworks and conducting primary and secondary data collection, it is now somewhat possible to outline some of the main points and opportunities and challenges that exist when assessing whether community gardens can be an effective tool in addressing food insecurity within the neighborhood of Encanto, CA.

Opportunities

Education

As mentioned, and through especially the interview with Patrice Baker, a key member of Groundworks, it was very clear how much education was a focal point in the mission and vision of Groundwork. However, this was something that was shared by almost all the community garden stakeholders that we interviewed. Community gardens are not just viewed as a potential food source for the community, but rather a platform for education that can help educate the local residents about a myriad of things including home gardening methods, and healthy food recipes to name but a few.

Social cohesion

A reoccurring theme and benefit of having urban community gardens, is the potential for enhancement of social capital within a community. They have the opportunity to eradicate possible barriers between residents and instead create bonds. In addition, knowledge sharing can be a very important bi-product. Social capital is an extremely important resource to have in low SES areas, which just magnifies the potential asset that community gardens bring to a community like Encanto.

Eradicating empty plots of land

Throughout Encanto, there are vacant plots of land scattered all around. During a community asset mapping activity we did during our BLUM internship tenure, we managed to map numerous empty plots throughout Encanto. Empty plots are associated with attracting litter, drugs and crime and generally detracting from the overall esthetic appearance of the community. Herein lies the perfect opportunity for the local government or urban community garden organizers etc. to convert these plots into gardens, in effect contributing to the community in many different ways.

Food source

Obviously, when thinking of a community garden, production of produce is the first benefit and main function that comes to mind. However, as highlighted previously, community gardens offer a plethora of other benefits and qualities, especially to low SES communities. In fact, the actual produce is rarely going to satisfy the foods needs of a community like Encanto, and has to be seen as a complimentary source. The primary source still has to be local grocery stores and supermarkets etc. On the other hand, while doing the questionnaires, it was found that a lot of local residents had gardens at their disposal at home, meaning that gardening education received at a community garden could result in cultivating different crops at home. This coupled with getting connected and acquainted with fresh, healthy, organic produce could go a long way and have a profound impact.

 Challenges

Collaboration

Often times, as a community garden organizer, it is of the utmost importance that you collaborate with a lot of different stakeholders in order to successfully operate a community garden. These could include local governments, CBOs, the community at large, and perhaps university extensions. This is a huge cauldron of different opinions and agendas, which can be very difficult to navigate through. When doing our interviews with a lot of the key members of CBOs, unison and collaboration were often stated as being a challenge, despite having stakeholders that wanted to go in similar directions. However, many success stories exist within Encanto, where extensive collaboration has been extremely giving and productive.  One such example is Ocean View community garden, where, In 2012, UCSD researchers, local volunteers and community members of the Mt. view neighborhood, planned and initiated the development of Ocean view community garden(OVCG) which is located on Ocean view Blvd. Here, UCSD helped initiate this project in connection with its University of California’s  global food initiative, created to study sustainable ways to better the worldwide supply of nutritious foods. This particular garden is a perfect example on how different stakeholders with similar goals can come together and create a potentially huge asset for the community.

 Land tenure

With the different community gardens that we have visited throughout Encanto, and the secondary data collected, it is evident that land tenure can be a huge challenge for a community garden, because the land ownership can be subject to change at a moment’s notice. Many of the urban community garden organizers don’t actually own the land they sit on, and are confronted with uncertainty about the land ownership. This is a macro-level issue and is something that the local municipality has the potential power to remedy.

 Organizational structure

In order for a community garden to be successful, it needs a sound foundation of eager members/founders who form the backbone of the garden and carry it. However, the structure of the organization/garden has a lot to say as well, and is definitely where a lot of gardens falter. During an interview with Jacob Brownwood, the propagation manager at EL, he suggested one way to set up a sustainable garden structure; Instead of having each garden member plan and plant their own crops individually, the different members would collectively and democratically come up with an overall plan attaining to which crops should be planted, and how. This would prevent mono-cropping, enhance biodiversity within the garden, but also increase the efficiency and utilization of the available arable soil. However, this still necessitates strong leadership at the top, which definitely can be a challenge to locate and attain.  

Community engagement

Based on interviewing key members of the Ocean View community garden, and conducting our questionnaires around Encanto, it is evident that awareness of local urban community gardens can be somewhat lacking within the community. Granted, there are some who are aware of the different gardens in the area, but for the most part, people weren’t aware of them. Quite a few did not even know that a community garden was in general. This is something that can be a huge challenge for community garden organizers, and something that should be a focal point going forward, trying to increase the awareness among the residents pertaining to community gardens.

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Hitting the mark and reaching our learning goals

During the preparation phase of our internship, we, in collaboration with our internship supervisor, established a set of learning objectives that should be obtained throughout our internship tenure.

Upon completion, we had 5 learning goals in total that stretched across the whole spectrum on the taxonomical level.

The first one was to gain experience and insight into how a community garden is run and which challenges and barriers exist within such a setting. This knowledge has been slowly gained through the whole experience, doing informal interviews with a myriad of actors within the local community garden scene, in turn stemming from a large host of individual community gardens. It’s been very interesting to experience different perspectives on the matter, However, we have indeed learned a lot talking to the members of our own internship organization, Groundworks San Diego. One of the biggest challenges of running a community garden, is the organizational aspect, and how it is set up. You absolutely need a rock solid foundation of members that are willing to put a lot of time and energy in the project, because starting a community garden is a lot of work without seeing the fruit of that labor immediately. Therefore, it is very important to have a long term perspective.A lot of community gardens fail in its initial phase because of this very reason.

Another learning objective we had was to gain knowledge about the food availability and accessibility in the area. While we already have conducted several interviews, we will continue to do so, as well as handing out questionnaires in order to gain additional insight into the matter. Lastly, we have done secondary literature review and have produced a map of the food landscape of the area, where all outlets have been mapped to identify the proximity of these.

Lastly, we want to gain a more holistic understanding of how community gardens can address food insecurity both at the micro-cosm and macro-cosm level. We intend to compare and contrast the experiences we have made at the local level to what has been previously been done in other parts of the US. There is an expansive pool of knowledge and data attaining to the subject and many successful examples of community gardens having an impact on addressing food security in a plethora of communities.

During the remaining part of our stay here, we will complete a series of interviews with community members and relevant stakeholders. Also, the aforementioned questionnaire will be conducted and will be handed out to various community members, in order to get a proper insight into the current food security situation within the community.

Stay tuned.

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All the Johnson children gathered for the days first teaching session. Here, during the first teaching seesion, they focus on the topic of the day and compare and contrast

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Kids assembled under the shadestructure

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Earthlab on a day when the children from Johnson middle school came by. Here, they are under the big shade structure that is in the middle of Earhlab. It’s hot!!

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The children arriving to Earthlab, and all the interns greeting them. There are both UCSD (University of California, San Diego) Interns and us

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Experiences from the first couple of weeks at the Earthlab

Wow, the first couple of weeks went by SO fast! Nicholas and I are working full-time at the Earthlab school/community garden where we teach children from two nearby middle schools, namely the Chollas Mead and Johnson middle schools. The internship organization that we are interning at, Groundworks San Diego, are an active partner in what is called the Diamond Educational Excellence Partnership (DEEP) program. It’s a huge partnership coalition between the local NGOs and CBOs to further the local educational level, in order to support the neighborhood children and to make the early stages of the educational pipeline smooth.

Here, we are in effect connecting the classroom and local environmental habitat together, and teaching the children from an expansive curriculum, which includes everything from native plant propagation, habitat restoration to sustainable and renewable energy sources and water preservation.

This is done both through traditional teaching as well as more practical settings, where the children get hands on experience with their local habitat. Here, a myriad of “experiments”, and field trips are conducted by the children. The children are given names such as scientists, biologists, designers, innovators, inventors, in order to create the appropriate setting, as well as planting the idea in their minds that it absolutely is achievable to become one of these titles or similar, with hard work and studying – Especially important due to the fact that words like “college” or “university” usually aren’t tossed about too much within this particular community, because not too many people have a college degree.

In additional thought definitely worth mentioning; through doing research and talking to people from the general San Diego area, caution was worded about the Neighborhood of Encanto (where Groundworks is situated) However, having experienced it first-hand, it is not the “ghetto” that we were expecting at all, and it has been very welcoming indeed! Also, the children are for the most part very well behaved, and not at all what we expected. There is no doubt about that the neighborhood has different issues that have to be dealt with, being that the community is quite high in poverty and crime compared to the rest of SD, however it definitely has a lot of assets as well. More on that during a later post. Stay tuned.

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My initial thoughts going into this internship.

Setting the stage; having quite a lot of peripheral family residing near San Diego, California and having heard so many good things about the city and general area from family and friends, I have been wanting to experience the area for quite a bit of time. So when the time came to think about where I wanted to conduct my second internship as part of my BA degree in Global Nutrition and health (GNH) at the Metropolitan University of Copenhagen, the San Diego area immediately came to mind. As things unfolded, Nicholas Scotland and I shared similar ideas and notions about destination and possible bachelor thesis themes and content, so we decided to pursue doing both the internship and subsequent thesis writing together.

However, making a trip like that coming from Copenhagen, a lot a different things have to fall into place and the planning for the trip started almost a year before the actual internship would start.

American hospitality is well known, and I have certainly experienced it several times before, but nothing could prepare me for how inclusive, hospital and generous people here could be. As mentioned, I have very loosely related family but they might as well have been the closest, most inner members of the family, seeing how they treated both Nicholas and myself and how, as it turned out, would open their homes completely to us. This of course is an immense resource, and something that cut the costs considerably on an otherwise expensive trip.

About 6 months before the internship would start; we located and contacted a local organization called Groundwork’s San Diego. It is a CBO, NGO that works with community engagement and community capacity building within the immediate neighborhood of Encanto, located in the southeastern part of San Diego. Here, the Earth lab, a school/community garden, is one of their most prized possessions, offering education on renewable energy, sustainability in various forms and water preservation to three nearby middle schools, whilst simultaneously connecting the students to their immediate ecological environment.

Talking to our Internship host through email correspondence and several phone calls we came to some sort of an understanding about their expectations as well as ours. However, communicating across approx 8000 kilometres, setting expectations and goals for both parties involved can be one thing which all is fine and dandy whilst being home, but that is something that can change dramatically once you actually arrive and experience the reality of it. We did however, have the expectations that we would help out teaching at the Earthlab for approx. the first month, and then transition to doing preliminary work for our BA thesis for the last two months, and really get to decide how our time should be used. So far, the plan and expectations are being upheld, as we are teaching full time at the Earthlab, whilst already setting up interviews and getting in contact with influential members of the community, setting the stage for our own research later in the process.