FOOD SECURITY and Community-Based Learning

What does food security have to do with community-based learning? At Lakehead University, it means that faculty, students, and community members are working together to build curriculum-based research projects and service opportunities that foster student leadership.

“Our world food production today is dominated by a dependency on a diminishing oil supply for both food distribution and food production, says Social Work Professor Connie Nelson. “Members of the Food Security Research Network (FRSN) maintain that this issue can be best addressed through more vibrant local economies, and we apply ourselves to this premise in a number of new ways.”

Working with community partners and area residents, the FSRN provides the facilitative leadership required to create new opportunities to expand and strengthen local food production and consumer demand. Another major role of the FSRN is to increase public awareness about issues related to food security in the region.

The Learning Garden is one of the many initiatives of the FSRN. Through it, Dr. Connie Nelson and Psychology Professor Mirella Stroink have shown that tending a garden can both improve the gardeners' understanding of health, and strengthen a community's cultural connection to food cultivation. The program started when a former student from Ginoogaming First Nation, concerned about health problems in his community, approached his professors to see if Lakehead's Food Security Research Network could help.

From that seed grew the Learning Garden – a holistic, place-based research and learning program that uses gardens to study attitudes, knowledge, and learning about food and culture in Aroland First Nation and Ginoogaming First Nation.

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