It’s your food security experts from the Salty Liquid team here!
Our today’s session (6.4.2020) was very intense! We had three workshops focusing on solutions, evaluation, and their possible impacts. In addition, one of the main goals was to prepare for the meeting with the mentors this Wednesday. Mentors are university researchers who work in collaboration with different stakeholders. They will hopefully provide some new perspectives which will help us to evaluate our current progress.
Our solution is rather a question itself (What are the most pressing questions and challenges in the context of Finnish food security during the Corona pandemic?). Therefore, we have found it difficult to follow the workshop instructions. Today was no different. We had to improvise a little bit but, in the end, we managed to proceed. During the first workshop we concluded that based on the news and public conversation the two most pressing questions are:
- Where and how to get enough seasonal workers for food production?
- How to ensure nutrition for people in the most vulnerable positions?
We decided to go on with the question no. 2 and used it as a base for the next two workshops. While evaluating the impacts and the extent of the question, we found out that there are 112 000 school children coming from families with low income (Tilastokeskus). And did you know that in 2019 there were approximately 4600 homeless people in Finland (Vailla vakinaista asuntoa ry)? From the global perspective, the number is small but still, ideally, the number would be closer to zero. As the Corona pandemic has also changed the routines of food aid, homeless people might not have access to any proper meals. Nutritious food is one of the basic human needs to which everyone should have access, whether they have a kitchen or not.
Finally, we prepared our 5-minute pitch for Wedn
esday. Luckily, we have introduced our work to different people in this course earlier, so we had good material for it. We were also told to think about some questions to ask from our mentor and came up with two. For example, one thing we have started to think more and more is how to summarize and visualize the discussion we have followed. What sort of graphs or figures would be most useful and understandable for people who are not familiar with the subject? We hope to gain some ideas about that in our meeting.
To end today’s blog post, we want to reflect on our teamwork so far. In the very first lecture (when we could meet live!) it came up that the motivational value thriving all of us to work among sustainability is EQUALITY. So, it seems that this group is tackling the right problem. The challenge that E2 gave us was huge and has definitely required some flexibility, improvisation and dancy moves (which were recognized as some of our strengths btw 😉) on the way. We keep on going and look forward to the pitches!
Best of luck to the other groups for their pitches and have a good Easter break!
Do your Easter food shopping respectfully; keep your distance and don’t stay in the shop for too long! And don’t forget to buy some mämmi 😀.