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Bayshore Park Community Garden
Urgent Evoke Mission 002 Food Security Act:
For the last month or so, I have been volunteering at the Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre. One of the projects we have been working on is a community garden in the Bayshore area of Ottawa. I have been doing a variety of administration tasks throughout the month, but the biggest day of all was our build day. It was a hot day, with some breeze, but we managed to build 21 boxes, and with some of the donated sand and soil from Just Food, we were able to fill 3 of them.
Even though by the bus ride home I was so exhausted I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I was really proud of that day. I was proud of what we got done and the effort that everyone put in to improve their community and their lives. On a very personal level, I was also very proud of myself because I expected to but just a follower in our little groups, and I ended up taking on a leadership role. I enjoyed guiding some of the young children, who very much wanted to help out too. Overall, it was a very successful day.
I’m the one on the bottom left in the yellow shirt holding the drill.
To see more photos from the Build Day, please visit my website.
Urgent Evoke Mission 003 Power Shift Learn:
Dr. Daniel Nocera: A new method of storing solar energy
In this video, Dr. Daniel Nocera explains how we can use solar energy to power our houses both during the day, and when the sun goes down using the method of water splitting.
Urgent Evoke Mission 002 Food Security Learn:
Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic
access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs, as well
as to culturally acceptable food preferences for an active and healthy life. As
well, foods are produced as locally as possible, and their production and
distribution are environmentally, socially and economically just.
Definition of Food Security, Just Food.
According to Furthering Food Security in Ottawa, the determinants of food security are cost, access, income, cultural acceptance, food quality, as well as knowledge and understanding of food and nutrition. The groups at risk are ones who are in/have/are: low-income households, minimum wages, social assistance, immigrants, people with disabilities, First Nations, seniors, children, homeless people, and housing issues.
In Ottawa, however, there are solutions and interventions already taking place.
1. Charitable Food Sectors: Includes the Salvation Army, the Boys and Girls Club, Buns in the Oven, Foster Farm Family House, the Good Food Box and the Ottawa Food Bank, just to name a few. For more information on charitable food sectors, click here and here.
2. Government and Non-Government Community Initiatives: Includes community gardens, collective kitchens, breakfast programs. For more information, click here.
3. Increase Promotion of Local Food (Production, Retailers, and Suppliers): Production meaning local farming, and community supported farming. Retailers and Suppliers meaning farmers’s markets, in grocery stores, wholesalers, etc.
4. Community Economic Development (CED): Includes Backyard Bonanza, Co-op Jana, Krackers Katering, and People First Vegetarian Catering Group. For more information on what a CED is and a description of each of these initiatives, click here.
On Creativity:
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
This is how I feel about my vision from Urgent Evoke.
Urgent Evoke Mission 001 Social Innovation Imagine:
When Alchemy calls you in 2020, where will you be?
In 2020, I can see myself teaching a high school level Public Health class. The class would not only cover the basics of fitness and nutrition (the health promotion aspect), but it would cover sexual health, global health, and other important topics that are an interest to the students. It would essentially be a student directed class, where they choose most of the topics, and it would be a way of class discussions, looking at both sides of the spectrum. It would challenge the students to think, act, learn, and perhaps help the students to decide what to do upon graduation.
Urgent Evoke Mission 001 Social Innovation Learn:
What you have matters more than what you lack.
Ethan Zuckerman, from Innovation from Constraint
This innovation “secret” is essential in Africa, where the game is focused on, but I really feel it’s universal. I chose it because people are too hung up on what they don’t have that they take for granted of what they do have.
I still sometimes wish I had this or that, but it’s been especially important for me lately when I had to learn it the hard way.
Take advantage of your resources. The library. The bike path. The nice weather and the not-so-bad-a-walk.
I can’t pretend that I know how this will work in Africa because I’ve never been there and I haven’t talked to anyone in Africa about it, which leads to another important innovation “secret” but I do believe it can help.
Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world
Jane McGonical studied gamers and discovers four things gamers are experts at.
1. Urgent Optimism: Extreme self motivation. It is to tackle an obstacle combined with the belief that they have a reasonable hope of success.
2. Social Fabric: Gamers can build stronger social relationships. Playing a game together builds bonds, and trust, and cooperation.
3. Blissful Productivity: We are optimized as human beings to do hard meaningful work. Gamers are willing to work hard all the time if given the right work.
4. Epic Meaning: Gamers love to be attached to awe inspiring missions.
Gamers get better feedback, stronger social relationships and feel more rewarded in games than they do in real life. McGonigal believes that, we have to make the real world work more like a game. “We can make any future we can imagine.”
If you’re a gamer: How do you feel you fit in to the four areas listed?
If you’re not a gamer: How do you feel you can play a role in this future?
Wisdom in Health 