Table of contents
Four stages of community engagement
Inform
The initial stage of developing a circular food project is to gather information. Before designing a specific tailor-made circular food system for a community, the initial priorities are:
- Understanding the present food supply situation, existing needs and shortcomings;
- Identifying available community resources (people, places, infrastructure, things) to tackle food waste and healthy food related issues; and
- Connecting with key community members and stakeholders who can help shape a vision and agenda.
The engagement process has a dual purpose: it serves to collect important information for the project design and development, while at the same time informing community members and stakeholders of the planned project.
To guide the information gathering process to understand the status quo of a specific community, the following two approaches may be useful:
- Food System Mapping: Create a map of how food flows through the community? Where does it come from? Who makes it? Where is it available within the community and does everybody have access to it? To answer and map questions like these various resources are available on the internet. Two examples of these are:
- Community Resources: What are the key community resources available to reshape the food system towards a circular waste-free economy? What natural resources exist? Who are key stakeholders? What infrastructures are already in place and could be utilised?
To create an overview of the community engagement process to design a circular food economy, these illustrations of a project flow may be helpful. Also, for the project in Yarrabilba, Queensland we have added images to highlight our activities at each stage here. The key steps outlined in the template are:
Involve
A circular food economy relies on and ultimately belongs to the members and residents of a community. Involving community members and stakeholders at the very early stages of the process is therefore important to create connection and ownership.
The Yarrabilba food economy project organised various activities and events that provided opportunities for people to meet, learn about the project, contribute and get involved.
To introduce the project to staff and students at Yarrabilba State Secondary College, Food Agility CRC created following animation:
Collaborate
Collaboration is a further deepening of involvement. As the project enters the implementation phase, various collaboration projects will be of great value. Once various collaboration partners are found, the project benefits, parameters and goals have to be defined and determined. It is crucial in this phase to identify not only an organisation able to commit resources in terms of time and in-kind contributions, but also true “project champions”, who are able to become true frontrunners and embrace the project within a local organisation. It emerged as a key learning that the availability of project champions, who are fully authorised and supported by the collaborating organisation, are perhaps the most significant enabling factors for community projects. Over time, as the project progresses and matures, it is then equally essential to spread the responsibilities of project champions across a larger and diverse number of participants, to prevent overloading of individuals and to increase resilience of the project itself.
The questions to be addressed in the project start-up phase:
- Who are my project champions?
- Who are the most suitable project team members to support?
- What team capabilities are needed to realise the project?
Furthermore, as outlined in the community engagement flowchart, important parameters of the collaboration should be defined formally, preferably in writing, including the shared goals and objectives, resources and contributions, responsibilities and incentives, and agreed action plans. The process to agree project parameters in minutes, email or other records is an important process of clarification and alignment of vision. Once the project has entered its implementation stage, it is also essential to guide and adjust its progression through an ongoing process of discussion, reflection, learning and adjustment. The Yarrabilba circular food economy project largely coincided with the significant limitations and uncertainties caused by the COVID restrictions and the ability of the project team to enact continuous adjustments has proven critical to keep the project moving forward.
Succession
The final stage of the community engagement process is “succession”, a phase when projects are up and running and are able to continue independently beyond the initial engagement. Change becomes embedded in daily practice and doesn’t require close collaboration as in the initial stages. While the initial engagement and collaboration will leave a certain legacy, the project ultimately it becomes self-directed, self-motivated and autonomous to define new goals, objectives and action plans.
Entering the phase of succession, collaborations are well established, project teams have settled and stabilised, resources committed on an ongoing basis and motivation and incentivisation comes from within the organisations themselves.
Incentivising participation in a circular food economy
Incentives describe benefits and rewards for community stakeholders, institutions and organisations to participate in a circular food economy. They also refer to incentives for project participants to complete the tasks and activities needed to achieve the project goals.
It is important to consider suitable incentives, which may be very specific to the community and its context. For different organisations, different perceived benefits may exist. The overview below offers some examples of incentives discussed and identified during this project:
For example, collaborations with schools are an effective way to create community engagement, and schools may have different motivations to invest resources and efforts into a circular food economy project. For instance, schools may be motivated and incentivised by:
- Setting an example – school students can learn about “doing the right thing” for sustainability.
- Knowledge and skills – students experience hands-on learning in waste management and growing fresh food.
- Education – embedding a circular food economy project in the school curriculum cuts across many subject areas such as biology, ecology, chemistry, mathematics, art, social science, art, hospitality and entrepreneurship
- Waste disposal cost – a school composting scheme could help reduce waste disposal expenses.
- Local connections – a circular food economy presents opportunities for schools to engage with the local community (collecting kitchen scraps, selling produce).
- Funding and grants – the resources and knowledge available can support schools in applying for grants and other educational support.
Incentives can be set and tracked manually and organised casually within smaller communities. For larger organisations, the tracking of incentives is a more complex problem and the Composting App presents a useful solution for larger organisational settings.
The app provides a platform to set goals and to track achievements through credits, points and badges. For example, the Yarrabilba project established an incentive system based on school house points, which were issued according to the number of compost buckets collected. Other items could be badges, individual points, or other form of credit, such as credit usable in the tuckshop.
Participation in the program became an incentive in itself. Students showed increased motivation to learn about composting and growing, and created their own compost warrior logo for the program. The logo was printed on some term-end souvenirs and also on a certificate of completion issued as a form of micro-credential to students.
The “Compost Warrior” program was completed at the end of Term 4 (2021). Students had been working through different activities, practical and classroom exercises for a whole school year and they have acquired great experience and knowledge on food waste, composting and growing food.
To recognise the students at the graduation ceremony we prepared a “Certificate of Completion” with student names and formal signatures by the school principal, heads of department, QUT program leader and industry partner representative.
At the same time a trophy was awarded for the winner of the composting competition, which was awarded to the most engaged school house. Every participant also received a metal water bottle with a Compost Warrior logo on it as a souvenir of their participation.
The items can be seen in the gallery below; click on them to view the whole image.
Activities
Yarrabilba Food Survey
Objective: Establish status quo of food system and understand food related perceptions in the community. Key objective is to understand the needs of the community.
Surveys can be undertaken in many different settings and using different methods. As an example, we refer to the “Yarrabilba Food Survey”, which was completed during the early stages of the project, addressing the engagement stages of involvement collaboration. The survey addressed 6 different areas of interest:
- Existing community connections to food
- Food security of adults
- Food security of children
- Community interest in potential local food system projects
- Demographics of participants
- Other comments
The food survey design and protocol can be accessed here. Some key objectives that were addressed by survey are discussed below:
Connection to food
The primary aim of this section was to understand participant’s existing level of involvement in their food system. This section of the survey addressed the level of community “connectedness” to the way their food is produced, e.g. the places where people currently get their fresh fruit and vegetables (supermarket, greengrocer, farmer’s markets, food delivery services, etc.), and what factors may influence current shopping and eating practices, such as freshness, cost, place of origin, appearance and fair prices for farmers.
The survey also aimed to understand the importance of food sustainability for community members and related practices such as growing their own food, involvement in community gardens, and their children’s level of involvement in school gardening and other food education programs.
Potential local food system projects
The section of the survey is of key importance as it does not only aim to understand community willingness to engage in local food system projects, but also the real and perceived community needs, which is provides important insights for projects priorities.
General topics covered by the survey included purchasing locally grown food, eating more fresh food, interest in cooking classes, participating and connecting with the community, as well as basic barriers and enablers for food system projects in the community, such as availability of time and money.
An important aspect explored within this section was the implementation of a food waste collection and composting system. For example, the survey addressed questions to find out whether participants would:
- Separate food scraps from other waste in the household
- Pay attention to instructions of what can go into a food waste bin
- Use a ‘bench top’ food scraps bin
- Put a ‘food and organics’ waste bin outside for collection
Another topic of the survey aimed to gain insights on perceptions of a mobile phone application to assist and incentivize engagement in food waste collection and composting. The survey also inquired about community interest in different types of rewards and incentives, including coffee vouchers, free or discounted fresh fruit and vegetables, locally produced honey, discounted tickets for workshops, free seeds / seedlings, and compost for household vegetable gardens. A key learning from the survey showed that engagement in a food waste collection system appeared to depend very significantly on a suitable reward program.
These findings from the initial food survey provided a useful and important direction for further activities of the program and it also represented a great opportunity to engage with the community on matters of food production and provisioning as well as the project itself.
Jamie Oliver Cooking Classes
Objective: Increase community skills to understand and prepare fresh food within the local context.
Different programs of the Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food address issues such as unhealthy diets, lack of cooking skills, and lack of understanding of fruit and vegetables.
The circular economy project at Yarrabilba aimed to ‘join the dots’ between the key elements of the circular food economy. Lendlease as project partner funded the Good Foundation to deliver a program of cooking classes at via the Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food. At the start of the program, the project team set up wicking beds and a composting system to demonstrate circularity to residents.
Community cooking programs may be available in your area, and collaboration can be a valuable addition to a community-based food program such as this. In Australia, you can alternatively visit OzHarvest to learn about their Nutrition Education Skills Training (NEST) program, which also offers free online cooking courses.
