Part 1: Update of Project Activities
This week, we took advantage of the extra time on Wednesday to return to the Fair Oaks Health Center and pilot our survey. Our biggest challenge of the week has been updating various drafts of the survey so that we capture all of the data that we want to review in order to assess consumer demand, while keeping the survey simple and easy to fill out. In addition, one challenge was translating the survey, while making sure the connotations of words that do not have direct translations (like farmers market) are correct. Before piloting the survey, I looked up online translations for “farmers market,” in addition to checking with multiple native Spanish speakers for how they would describe a “farmers market” in Spanish. I heard a lot of different responses (particularly because most replied with regional terms for outdoor markets, which do not necessarily just sell food or produce). We are still checking in with Priscilla to make sure we use the term she deems most appropriate, but in our pilot survey, we included the most commonly cited term from my Spanish speaking peers, and then explained the term with more context when we handed out the survey. Thus far, this has been effective at getting the message through, and we have updated a few minor aspects of the survey to make it clearer before we start our full roll-out of the survey. In addition to the Fair Oaks Health Center visit and survey pilot, other focus areas for this week have included meeting with Patricia to learn more about incorporating GIS Business Analyst into our research of the demographics of the area, and reaching out to another Stanford volunteer who will be working at the Fair Oaks Health Center this quarter and continuing where we leave off on the farmers market project after this quarter. It sounds like she is also very busy this quarter, but we are hoping to include her (as well as possibly a few other student interns Priscilla has referred to) with our work collecting surveys at the Fair Oaks Health Center. We are also continuing to work on scheduling focus groups with the Fair Oaks Health Center staff and patients, and sending flyers to Priscilla to publicize the focus groups. For the staff members who do not attend the focus group, we are including a link to an online version of our survey so they still have a chance to give us feedback. We have also been working on learning more about the regulations and permits required for the farmers market. Our particular challenge is that we are not sure that the farmers market will be approved because the Fair Oaks Health Center already has limited parking (shown below), and we may not be allowed to further limit the parking spaces by blocking off spaces for a parking lot. Our most important next step is to meet with Priscilla to discuss alternatives to this regulations challenge, and to further discuss plans for market management. We will also continue to coordinate focus groups, put to use what we learned about GIS this past week, and officially begin conducting the final version of our survey. Part 2: What You Observed and Learned The first time we visited the clinic, I remember being very impressed by the newness of the building, the quality of the equipment, and the excitement of the staff to be working in this new, integrated facility. After touring the Y2E2 building this past week in class, my visit to the Fair Oaks Health Center this week prompted me to reflect more on the building design in addition to the quality of equipment. One main idea I took away from the Y2E2 tour was the fact that the building was designed to encourage the faculty to cross paths, share ideas, and see sustainability as an important component of their day-to-day lives, and it seemed like the building design really has inspired faculty and students to reflect more on environmentalism and other main ideas and goals of the departments housed within Y2E2. The Fair Oaks Health Center has a different goal – promoting total wellness in families of all ages – but this also seems to be reflected in the building design. To begin with, the Fair Oaks Health Center is a combination of three former clinics. Whereas pediatric services and adults services used to occur in entirely different locations, now both are integrated into the same Fair Oaks Health Center building, which I think makes it easier to reflect on improving healthy living for one’s whole family rather than solely concentrating on improving the health of one member of the family who may be feeling ill. In addition, the waiting rooms for each floor are connected by a central lobby/ check-in area, instead of divided into isolated waiting rooms for each service, so it is easier to see the different services provided at the clinic (pediatric, adult, dental, mental health, optometry, pharmacy, WIC services), which makes the comprehensive approach of this clinic toward total wellness more apparent. Outside the door is a mural with “health” in multiple different languages (shown in part below), and above the front desk is another sign about total wellness in several languages. All of these components serve as reminders of the importance of healthy living, rather than just the importance of curing symptoms of individual diseases. After thinking about the role a building structure plays in the inner-workings of that building during our tour of Y2E2, I realized how well designed the Fair Oaks Health Center is to promoting total health. The only thing that I might have done differently in the Fair Oaks Health Center – after touring Y2E2 – would be to move the stairs into a more immediate and obvious location. I remember how the design of the staircase in Y2E2 made people in the building much more likely to take the stairs than the elevators. Right now in the Fair Oaks Health Center, there is a staircase, but it is a little harder to find (although there is a very small sign next to the door reminding us to take the stairs to improve total health). That being said, I understand that in a health center it is particularly important to have an elevator present for people with disabilities, the elderly, and families with kids in strollers. This week, in addition to touring the building, we also got a chance to pilot the survey, which has given us important feedback on how to update the survey before next week, and allowed us to observe and think about the logistical challenges we will face as we continue to pass out surveys. Our biggest logistical challenge is just the fact that it takes a long time to fill out the surveys. When we visited the health center, we approached individuals in the waiting areas (only one or two people at a time), and then sat with them as they filled it out so that we could answer any questions. This made it possible to clarify anything that was confusing about the survey, have a short a conversation and get some anecdotal data, and re-collect the surveys when they were complete, but it also made the process rather slow. We left campus (on our bikes) around 12:40 and got back around 3:20, but in the entire time that we were at the health center, we only collected twelve surveys. Now that we have had a chance to pilot the survey and see which parts have been unclear, we will be able to update the survey to make it easier to fill out, which might mean that we will not have to sit with each patient as they fill it out, but certainly the timing of conducting surveys at the health center is a logistical challenge we need to work out. One other important observation we made as we conducted surveys was the fact that when we approached individuals in the waiting room, we had no idea how long it would be until they were called in to their appointments. As a result, I had just explained the survey to three different people and asked if they would like to take it, when they got called into their appointments and consequently couldn’t fill out the survey. One woman had just begun her survey when she was called in and took it with her. We did not know how long her appointment would last so after completing surveys with the rest of the patients on that floor and still not seeing the woman return from her appointment, we ended up moving back down to the first floor. The woman who had taken her survey with her actually found us on the first floor on the way out and turned it in to us there, which was great, but I realized that we had not really told her where we would be and where she should turn in the survey when she got out of her appointment, so this is something we should be more clear about in the future. We have brainstormed the idea of having a collection box on each floor near the registration counters where we could ask people to leave surveys if they took the surveys with them as they went into appointments so that this process becomes clearer and flows more smoothly in the future. Overall, our survey pilot was useful not only for figuring out if our survey questions were clear, but also for observing existing logistical challenges, and giving us a chance to brainstorm solutions to these challenges before we return. In our most recent visit, Priscilla was absent from the health center, so we were not able to check in with her in person, but we are planning to update her on our logistical challenges and our proposed solutions and get her thoughts and ideas before we continue with the full roll-out of the surveys. Part 3: Critical Analysis This week was a particularly big step for us because it was our first week truly interacting with the patients at the Health Center. In our first visit to the Fair Oaks Health Center, we were focused on touring the facilities and talking to Priscilla about our updates and ideas, and her plans and thoughts on the farmers market project. Priscilla did introduce us to a number of the staff members at that point, so we had a chance to talk with them briefly about the farmers market project, and we were pleased to hear that every staff member we talked to showed enthusiasm for the idea. However, coming away from that experience, we also recognize that the patients at the clinic, compared to the staff members, tend to be more representative of the demographics of the broader North Fair Oaks community. In addition, the ultimate goal of the project – expanding access to healthy foods – is implicitly targeted at improving the accessibility of a healthy lifestyle for the patients of the health center and the surrounding community members, more than at the staff members who already may have a higher level of education around total wellness. Because of this, we recognize that while staff support is important (particularly because our contact at Collective Roots described that it has been slightly challenging to operate the East Palo Alto Farmers Market at the Ravenswood Health Clinic because staff tend to be unsupportive), it will be most important to interact with the patients and North Fair Oaks community members to assess what this population is looking for in a farmers market, and what features within a farmers market would make them most likely to attend. As we mentioned in the last reflection, we have been slightly nervous about approaching patients because 70% of patients are monolingual Spanish speakers, which creates a substantial language barrier. I (Sophie) have taken Spanish classes in high school and at Stanford, and interacted with a variety of Spanish speakers in other programs that I work with, but I have never before approached someone who I do not know at all, and spoken with them in Spanish. After Carly’s “Brave Spaces” workshop, I also reflected on the fact that I was worried about making assumptions about which language an individual spoke, and causing a misunderstanding based on any assumptions. I am very glad that we had the opportunity to think about our assumptions in this workshop before beginning patient surveys, because it better prepared me to ask (in Spanish, since more patients speak Spanish than English) which language an individual preferred, then continue the conversation from there. As I approached multiple different patients, I was pleased to see that patients were unfazed when I asked which language they wanted to speak in, were incredibly receptive to talking with me, and were willing to fill in the survey. I felt extremely grateful that the patients were super patient about talking to me in Spanish, and were willing to give us their time to chat a bit about the idea and fill out the survey. One of the important ideas I took from Carly’s “Brave Spaces” workshop and our larger discussions of service (such as one of our early readings on the Haas Principles of Ethical and Effective Service) is the importance of humility, of being genuine, and of working to build trust and learn together when you approach a community (particularly one that is different from your own). I felt very fortunate to have this opportunity to learn from each of the patients that I talked to, and I hope it was as apparent to them as it was to me that I was learning a ton from them, both in relation to ideas about farmers markets and in relation to speaking Spanish, as I tried to share my own understanding of the farmers market project so they could learn about it as well. I had some great conversations, including corrections to my Spanish that helped me speak more clearly with the next patients I talked to, and enjoyed the opportunity to get feedback on the survey and the farmers market project from the patients. Some patients were particularly enthusiastic, telling me what a great idea this would be, and checked the box on the survey indicating they wanted to be updated on the project in the future; I am excited about the fact that some of these initial relationships and learning will continue beyond the brief survey time at the health center. One assumption we had talked less about before this survey pilot was the assumption that our patients could read and write. We had talked a little with Priscilla initially about the fact that the community members have various levels of comfort with literacy, and we considered including pictures on our survey to make it easy to do even without being literate. As we developed the survey, we realized some questions were too abstract for pictures to describe without any words, and decided that the pictures made the surveys seem much too long. Instead, we have one picture at the top illustrating a farmers market, and the rest of the page is comprised of short check-box or fill-in-the-blank questions. However, when I got to the clinic, I was more focused on assumptions around language, and had not thought as much about our earlier conversations about levels of literacy. One woman I approached told me she was indeed interested in this farmers market project, but when I asked her to do the survey, she told me she couldn’t write or fill it out. Instead, we went though it step-by-step as I read aloud the questions and recorded her answers. This was incredibly easy to do, and also allowed me to get a little more anecdotal from this woman since she was already willing to talk to me about the idea, instead of just marking things down on a piece of paper. I was very excited by this woman’s enthusiasm for the project, and willingness to fill out the survey together. Most importantly, this experience reminded me that I should not make the assumption that individuals can read, and should always make it an option to go through the survey verbally. Overall, we came away from the health center excited about the information we had collected within the surveys, and ready to meet with Priscilla to work out the logistical challenges and prepare to streamline the survey process and make it as easy as possible for each patient and staff member to give us their input and make their voice heard. Last week the group met with Erin and Julia in a coffee shop in San Francisco. Melanie, from KALW, joined as well in order to teach us techniques on how to use a microphone properly and how to get the best results when audio recording. She gave us a convenient cheat sheet we intend on using in future interviews. Once we became familiar with different audio recording techniques, we were able to talk with Erin and Julia about the people we had selected to interview for the mapping project. We selected 14 different people that we felt provided a wide range of demographics and were a well-rounded representation of those affected by no-fault eviction. We presented the potential interviewees and received feedback from Erin and Julia as to the effectiveness and feasibility of those choices. We then composed both email and telephone conversation templates to use when asking evictees if they would be interested in being interviewed, which we submitted to Erin for her feedback, which we received.
We are still in the process of reaching out to potential interviewees, but already have two interviews scheduled for this coming Wednesday, the 12th. As for the rest of the interviews, we hope to be able to schedule the rest of them on two separate Saturdays, so that we can take turns heading up to San Francisco in pairs. Our plan is to make contact with every interviewee by Monday, February 10th so that we will have time to arrange an interview with each of them on either February 15th or 22rd. We all agreed that conducting the interviews in pairs would be a better option than all three of us attending all of them, as that could be intimidating and detrimental to the comfort of the interviewee. Jordan or Caroline will alternate driving to the city so that we will be able to easily navigate San Francisco and get to each interview site in a timely fashion. We also hope to conduct the interviews in the homes of the interviewees, but if that is not a possibility we will be looking for a quiet space we can use with good acoustics, one possibility being a room in the public library, which Erin tells us is free to rent. We are working on securing proper recording equipment and checking with Melanie form KALW to make sure it is what we need to get proper sound quality. In the meantime, Jordan will be working on creating a template in ArcGIS online, so that once we acquire our audio and visual components, we will be able to complete the Story Map in a timely manner. He has continued to explore different templates, and has found one that is geared towards audio recordings. This week in class, during Carly's workshop on making assumptions, our group did some important thinking about the role of preconceptions in the work we will be doing. We thought extensively about the preconceptions interviewees may have of us as Stanford students, including assumptions about our socioeconomic status, intelligence, capabilities, and character. We want to be able to connect with interviewees beyond the facades of our outward identities, and hope that by acting with authenticity and humility, we will be able to connect easily with interviewees, person to person. We additionally considered our unique position of having a fair amount of fairly personal information about our interviewees before even meeting them from the surveys they filled out, and discussed the idea of not allowing our prior knowledge permeate the interviews, as it is important to allow interviewees to have control over what information enters the conversation. If they want to offer us that information, then of course we will be receptive to it, but we want to be clear that only explicitly, directly offered information will be included in the map we create. Update on Project Activities
On Wednesday before class, the group met with Deland to review our potential for community outreach. In last week’s reflection, we expressed concern that the nature of our project would make interaction with the community difficult; after our meeting with Deland, we felt reassured that our goal to attend bi-weekly community meetings and share our research with these communities. With this in mind, our met with Aaron Aknin on Thursday morning and discussed some of the current issues in Palo Alto, what the planning department is investigating, and how our work could be of utility to their efforts. Specifically, we hashed out some ideas of potential research questions for our TDM study. For our study, we will be looking mainly at the funding mechanisms of independent third-party TMAs, how existing businesses can be enticed into the program, and how to maintain social equity within the TDM. With this framework in mind, we can make a more focused search and obtain more useable results. Finally, we visited Patricia during her office hours and worked together to learn how to add our Census data into GIS successfully. So far we completed the most recent ACS study for the three counties, and with this guide in mind, we now will do this with the 2000 and 1990 Census data for San Mateo, San Francisco, and Santa Clara counties. What We Observed and Learned With our project now in full swing, significant headway was made this week addressing all facets of our scope. On Monday, Marisa Raya, a guest speaker from the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), came to class to present on Plan Bay Area, a long-term land-use, housing, and transportation plan for a sustainable metropolitan region. Several themes from Marisa’s presentation pertained to our work. Through their Plan, ABAG hopes to reduce vehicle carbon emissions by encouraging urban density and transit, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure. Unfortunately, ABAG as an organization lacks the legal authority to enact this zoning and policy. Moving Forward Our first internal deadline-- complete downloading all of our data-- is being steadily worked on. We have learned how to transform the Census data into GIS maps, and are working steadily on creating the maps of mode share for individuals nearby Caltrain station. On the TDM front, we know now how we will be quantifying success, and can search for programs we evaluate to address our desired goals. Next week, we will also be meeting with Adina to discuss potential sources of employment data (for the maps which cover those who work near the Caltrain stations), and our progress thus far. Update of Project Activities
After completing our “Scope of Work” last week, we have spent this week focused on taking the foundational steps to move the project forward and preparing to truly start getting involved with the Fair Oaks Health Center and the surrounding North Fair Oaks Community. As defined by our “Scope of Work,” our goals for Week 5 were to build our survey for the Fair Oaks Health Center patients, staff members, and North Fair Oaks community members. In addition, we wanted to plan the logistics of conducting a focus group with the Fair Oaks Health Center staff members, and work with Priscilla to set up a focus group or individualized interviews with a few patients as well so we have detailed anecdotal data to supplement the more quantitative data we receive through the survey. After conducting several drafts of the survey on our own, we have sent a version of the survey to Priscilla for her review, so that we will be prepared to start testing the survey next week. In addition, we have worked to identify times for focus groups, and are in the process of contacting Priscilla regarding the scheduling and logistics (including identifying how many patients and staff we should try to talk to, and developing a flyer and incentivizing these individuals to come) for these two sessions. This work around the survey and focus groups was the main milestone for Week 5, but we have also been in the process of working towards other future milestones as well. We have focused on collecting more information around setting up farmers markets in low income communities, including following up with Collective Roots (after an interview conducted last Friday) about the East Palo Alto Farmers Market and the idea of a partnership between Collective Roots or another similar nonprofit organization and the Fair Oaks Health Center to guide the new farmers market management. Our contact at Collective Roots will be proposing the idea of a partnership with the Fair Oaks Health Center to the Collective Roots staff in their team meeting on Monday and getting back to us, so we will know whether or not to contact Priscilla about this idea– which is something she mentioned she would be interested in–early next week. Our efforts to gather the necessary information to move forward with this project have also included making phone calls to the SMC Ag Commission with questions about the application and required maps, and brainstorming a list of data points we hope to collect through GIS/Business Analyst, so we are well prepared to utilize this resource and can set up an effective meeting with Patricia Carbajales. What You Observed and Learned This week, the most important new insights we gained came from the interviews we have done in an effort to find out more about farmers markets in similar communities. In our call to Collective Roots, our contact emphasized many of the challenges they have faced, and made it clear that the management of even a small farmers market takes a great deal of time in order to incentivize both community members and vendors to participate so that the market stays financially stable. Interesting incentive programs used by Collective Roots include a “Double Bucks” program, where Collective Roots matches dollars up to $20 per month for families who use WIC or food stamps at the farmers market and a CSA program where Collective Roots buys bundles from the vendors and sells to individuals outside of EPA with a higher purchasing power and willingness to pay to make the market worthwhile for the vendors. Although these programs do incentivize participation and insure greater revenue at the market, the administration of these programs takes a lot of work. We learned that the operation of the EPA Farmers Market (which has only 2-3 vendors) takes 20 hours a week dedicated by a Market Manager, and 12 additional hours added by other staff members working on market management, publicity, and incentive programs. Although a bit discouraging, this information will be incredibly useful when we work with Priscilla to determine the Fair Oaks Health Center’s plan for market management, since before Priscilla was unsure as to who would be responsible and how much time they would need to dedicate. In addition, Collective Roots will be getting back to us about whether they might be interested with partnering with the FOHC in the establishment of the farmers market, so we may be able to report back to Priscilla with this as an option for market management. This interview with Collective Roots was also particularly useful in informing our survey drafts. For example, we learned that the East Palo Alto Farmers Market, which has moved several times, has been most successful at the Ravenswood Health Clinic, but Collective Roots have found that the clinic staff really haven’t participated in the market at all, so it will be important for us to make sure to ask whether each respondent is a patient or staff member so we know whether the staff are willing to support and attend this farmers market. Overall, the information we have gathered from Collective Roots, Jerry Lami the Executive Director of the West Coast Farmers Market, and the SMC Ag Commission has been very helpful in preparing us to take the next steps in our community outreach. Critical Analysis In class this week, our discussions and readings about Plan Bay Area tied in to our project through because North Fair Oaks is one of the locally-nominated Plan Bay Area priority development areas. We learned that North Fair Oaks has received planning funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission intended for funding their updated community plan. This information provided us with more context information around what resources are behind the community of North Fair Oaks currently, and the context around the inspiration for the current North Fair Oaks Community Plan, which in fact recommends a farmer’s market. We appreciated the opportunity in class this week to reflect on our identities, the negative impact of making assumptions, and the importance of bridging differences. Following the discussion led by Carly, we found ourselves reflecting on the commonly-held assumptions that farmers markets are for wealthy people, and thought about how best to approach community members so that they feel that the farmers market would be inclusive and inviting. In negotiating how best to approach community members when we enter the health center to conduct surveys, one concern that came up was what language to address the patients in, since 70% of the patients are monolingual Spanish speakers, but we also don’t want to make assumptions (especially wrong assumptions) about what language each individual patient speaks. We are thinking that the best thing to do will be to ask if they prefer Spanish or English (in Spanish since a majority are Spanish speakers) as we approach, then go with whatever language they are most comfortable with. We appreciated the insight in class that this first contact will not be the most important part of the conversation, and that instead we need to focus on building trust and showing respect throughout the rest of the conversation, once the patient has identified what language they wish to converse in. Descriptive
We’ve crossed the halfway mark in our quarter and gained momentum on our Golden Gate project - our introductions to Plan Bay Area by Marisa Raya on Monday, to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by Deland on Wednesday, and participation in Carly’s ‘Brave Space’ workshop circle soon thereafter allowed us to further consider both the greater sustainability implications of our efforts in this class and the importance of reflecting on identity politics in service learning contexts. Marisa Raya presented us with Plan Bay Area’s goals and current progress, emphasizing, as she put it, that it was created to be a “tool for democratic decision making.” The Plan sought to embody the visions of individual regions’ communities and organizations, a commendable goal that she acknowledged had its own difficulties and contradictions. Some of these complications included lawsuits filed against Plan Bay Area and others evoking CEQA. We were able to review in class Wednesday how we may best organize our service learning experiences in accordance with sustainability - defining the community members and individuals we serve as well as taking advantage of pressure points. Carly helped moderate a class discussion on the most sensible and genuine ways to approach different individuals in service learning projects. We’ve come to correspond with more community partners thanks to Deland, Janice, and Dyanna’s help getting us in touch directly with SF Youth Commission, Walk San Francisco, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR), La Playa/Great Highway Neighborhood Watch, Outer Sunset Merchant & Professional Association, Java Beach Café, and 45th Avenue Neighborhood leaders. Though the rainy weather forced us to cancel our series of Golden Gate Park interceptor surveys scheduled for Friday morning, we still took the opportunity to meet and make use of the lessons we picked up on in class during the week. We emailed all of our community partners and finalized the majority of our online surveys for contacts recommended to us by Supervisor Tang’s office. We created tailored surveys for Java Beach Cafe Patrons, Outer Sunset Merchant & Professional Association, 45th Avenue Neighbors, and La Playa/Great Highway Neighborhood Watch. Interpretive As we engage in our classwork and research, we continually must bring ourselves back to some key guiding questions of our project. These include: ● What communities are we serving and how can we best serve them? ● How do the principles of sustainability relate to and shape our project? ● How can we best connect the work we do in the classroom with our field work, outreach, and project goals? These past weeks have been instrumental in addressing some of these questions. The class session on community outreach helped us define our own strategies for engaging with our respective communities. We realized that we must be careful to not use the word “community” as a blanket term and must be aware of the many different community groups and individuals we are interacting with. For example, the residents of the Sunset District are a separate community than the members of the SF Bike Coalition and we must be mindful of these distinctions. We were particularly inspired by the three-step outreach process of the Broadway Street renewal and, in crafting our own project, are emulating a similar process. Continuing in the vein of outreach, we were moved and inspired by the Open Spaces talk about assumptions and left with a feeling of appreciation for both the safe space that was created in the classroom as well as insight as to how this idea applies to our project. Reflecting on the assumptions that could arise in our work allowed us to proactively analyze potential issues and misunderstandings. This reflective activity ties into the larger theme of service learning as a continual and mutual learning process. To that end, we have taken the skills we learned in class regarding outreach and have devised a number of surveys to disseminate to different community organizations. These include the SF Bike Coalition, the La Playa/Great Highway Neighborhood Watch, the Outer Sunset Merchant & Professional Association, the Java Beach Cafe, and the 45th Avenue Neighbors. We were sensitive in customizing the survey for each group, with our overarching theme being to discern transit and access patterns to Golden Gate Park. We realized the complexity of working with varying interest groups. One point that was reiterated from our class discussion was the use of the Stanford name: we were hesitant to immediately qualify ourselves as Stanford students because of the weight that name carries. We ultimately decided to introduce ourselves as students and then add Stanford in after when talking about the Sustainable Cities class. We found this to be the most inconspicuous and respectful method when engaging with community groups. Shifting to a more comprehensive picture, the lessons on Plan Bay Area and some of the policies driving development helped us situate our project in a larger context. Literally, we realized the environmental review process this project or other development initiatives would have to undergo in order to be realized and what a lengthy process this can become. However, we found it even more important to remember the scope of our project and not become too myopically engaged in each individually designed entrance to the Park without considering the larger neighborhood and regional consequences. As we approach the design phase of our project, we realize the importance of justifying our design recommendations based on a well-researched knowledge of the many stakeholders and regulations at play. We are very grateful for all the contacts with whom Janice has put us in touch. They will be invaluable in providing expert information and recommendations. Unfortunately, we were not able to go into the city this Friday due to weather concerns, but we have rescheduled this visit for next week. We do not believe this puts us under a serious time constraint, although we of course are remaining mindful of the rapidly passing quarter. We have set deadlines for ourselves that we continue to reassess as necessary. Overall, we would describe this week as an administrative one in which we tackled many emails and survey distribution electronically. We are excited to get back into the field again next week. Applicative With our new contacts such as Commissioner Persky of the SF Youth Commission and Nicole Schneider of Walk San Francisco, we will be able to take the valuable feedback they provide for us and use it to improve our design methods and approach. Marisa Raya of Plan Bay Area, also opened our eyes to issues in renovation/building in communities that are already comfortable with their current living conditions, or wish for something else to be implicated other than what we plan. We will be addressing this potential issue by constant interaction with our Community Partner Janice Li, and members of organizations that are heavily involved in the community such as Commissioner Nicholas Persky of the SF Youth Commission and Nicole Schneider of Walk San Francisco. Another tool from this week that will prove very valuable to us was Carly’s ‘Brave Space’ circle. Providing tremendous insight as to how we should go about conducting surveys and interacting with the people of Sunset District and its surrounding communities, we were able to look at our project through the lens of individual potential emotion and possible desires of the community members we will be interacting with. We learned that it is extremely important to take into consideration how we may come across to the people we survey and interact with, i.e., whether or not we show genuine interest and care for their community and the project, how well we can relate to them, and being conscious of some biases that may be there, but eliminating it from interaction. For our project, we are well aware that we will be talking to and interviewing a wide variety of people with extremely different backgrounds, thus we will look at finding common ground with the people we survey to show we have a genuine interest in helping them and their community rather than coming across as wanting to take over without respect to their desires. We will also be conscious of time commitments and will make the surveys and interviews relatively brief. As mentioned before in the descriptive portion of this reflection, we were not able to go to the city today, but we did gain some ground and are moving forward. Taking the opportunity to reply to and request feedback from community organization members that have reached out to us and are willing and eager to help us will prove of great importance to our project. As mentioned before, we will be able to use their expertise and experience to enhance or project ideas, implications, and direction as soon as we receive the feedback. We also took today as an opportunity to customize and send out surveys to contacts recommended by Supervisor Tang’s office including: Java Beach Cafe Patrons, Outer Sunset Merchant & Professional Association, 45th Avenue Neighbors, and La Playa/Great Highway Neighborhood Watch. With the information we gather from these contacts we will be able to look at how dangerous nearby community members to Lincoln Way feel the street is, and what they wish to see implemented to increase the safety on this street. We will be heading into this coming week with hopefully a strong base of knowledge collected via the surveys sent out to the recommended contacts and ready to conduct interceptor surveys in the park and meet face to face with community organizers and organizations on Sunday, February 16th. |
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