Update on Project Activities:
To preface, the team project comprises two central initiatives that support the overall objective of facilitating the provision of accessible information in regard to communal food resources. As a starting point, group members have self-assigned themselves under specified roles that have been outlined by the project partner (see chart below). All four of the assigned roles were a reflection of the varied interests and skill sets within the team, and of unBox’s major entry-level projects. The foundation of the work will be centered around (1) collecting user feedback alongside users’ personal experiences in order to (2) improve information mediums and access to resources. Collection of user feedback includes creating consent documents, research protocols and interview questions, conducting interviews, and collating data on user testing for both social workers and SNAP participants. Improvement of information mediums entails data entry and adjustments to the SNAP Online User guide and BayAreaCommunity.org website. What We Observed and Learned: It is evident that there is a gap in knowledge among disadvantaged households burdened with inconsistent access to reliable food sources – which is largely attributed to the lack of dependable resources. As a collective whole, we observed that through the provision of well-grounded information, organizations such as unBox can bridge this gap in knowledge and mitigate the barriers between low-income households and accessible food sources by reinforcing media that connects them to proficient resources nearby. There are many factors that may impede families from utilizing the food resources in their area. It is critical that as a group, the process of obtaining information for food access resources is simplified in a way that is accommodating for the primary beneficiaries of these programs, including both social workers and participants. One of the ways in which the group can provide effective streams of information is by gaining an understanding of the experiences of underprivileged families by active listening and placing ourselves within their perspective – a premise that has been established to be productive for planning actionable steps. By asking informative questions, we can analyze the needs of communities, enabling the group to serve in an efficient and agreeable manner. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward The next steps for our group centers largely around fieldwork in user testing and content creation. As mentioned before, there are two initiatives: improving access to SNAP through an online guide and refining unBox’s BayAreaCommunity.org website. A set of interviews will be conducted in the next two weeks based on the users for each initiative, namely, SNAP participants and social workers, respectively. To prepare, we will produce a consent document, research protocol and list of interview questions. Once the interview data is collected, we can shift our focus to collaborating with unBox and community members in order to improve access to their resources. Half of our project team members will largely focus on conducting these interviews for user testing while the other half of our team will focus on content creation. Fieldwork for content creation varies based on the initiative. For BayAreaCommunity.org, data entry and validation is one key component in addition to making some resources on the website more accessible to social workers. For the SNAP online guide, fieldwork involves brainstorming new ideas to present the resources to users and ensuring its ease of use. Comments are closed.
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