Food4families are looking for regular attendees of the garden

Food4families are looking for regular attendees of the garden who might want to be involved in helping with planning events/community engagement and/ or with the ongoing evaluation of the project.

FOOD4FAMILIES
ACTION PLAN TEAM and EVALUATION TEAM

Following the completion of the 2017/18 Independent Evaluation Report two outline plans were prepared – one for actions recommended by the report and one for continuous evaluation, both for the 2019 year.
The intention is that the two teams include a mix of tutors, managers, volunteers or users.

Here are some details for both – for those who might be interested in taking part:

• Each team to consist of not more than 5 people – but including Sharon Fitton and John Ord. In all, a total of no more than 6 additional volunteers.

• Each team will meet for no more than two hours in five meetings between February and November 2019 – a total commitment of 10 hours. At times and venue to be agreed.

Roles of volunteers:

1. Volunteers will be asked to review and monitor either action plans or project evaluation, depending on team membership. This will involve having oversight of all Food4Families garden sites and judging how sites are progressing with their action plans or what local evaluations are revealing. 

2. If a volunteer in the ACTION PLAN TEAM you will be expected to attend all 5 team meetings and review the information from local sites on how they are progressing with their plans – this means analysing information, making judgements about progress, helping with suggestions for improvement or changes and generally being positive and constructive. 

This role is not about examining or inspecting, finding fault and laying blame or responsibility – it is much more to do with being supportive or advisory. 

3. If a volunteer in the EVALUATION TEAM you will be expected to attend all 5 team meetings and review the evaluation process from all local sites, monitoring how and what information is coming in and searching it to see if any lessons or suggestions are coming forward. 

Again, it is not about inspecting or examining what is happening but being positive and constructive and trying to look for developments that move F4F and/or its local sites forward. 

Setting up these two teams places an obligation on F4F to ensure that local sites are taking part in both priorities i.e. having an action plan and agreeing to carry out the usual evaluations but also to provide information on a quarterly basis for each of the teams to review.

Additionally, the hope is that we begin to build an internal to F4F regular system of having action plans and evaluations and that we can train some people to have the skills to carry this work forward – the work of self-monitoring using a range of research skills. In other words, developing as community researchers.

If you are interested please contact Sharon via email: [email protected]