Halfway!

Reflective Blog 2, 29 August 2019

I started my placement in June. It is now late August, and one of my biggest challenges so far have been in the struggle of finding a way to break down barriers for the participation by beneficiaries in giving feedback on structure and performance of Free to Feed (FTF) and staff.

The main barriers that I have noticed include:

• English as second language (is it primarily the written English that is a barrier, but spoken is also an issue with some participants)
• Technology
• Previous experiences with giving feedback/cultural issues related to feedback-giving (especially when giving feedback to employer or superior)
• Dependency on organisation for work (and therefore income)

Language and technology were both pretty obvious barriers from the get-go. However, the latter two took me a little while to put into words. The feedback that we did get was incredibly positive and praising – even when other people in the cooking class would say that there was not enough zucchini or that the hot water tap was acting up. This made me question what could possibly keep them from sharing this with us.

It is not that they do not trust Free to Free. In fact, they often communicate both happy and sad times in their lives to us. I definitely think that some of it is due to fear. Even though they do know and trust us, they are so dependent on their shifts at FTF that they are afraid to disturb the status quo. Many of the participants in the program are facing a variety of issues in their personal lives, including financial struggles and mental health issues, meaning they are incredibly dependent on Free to Feed for both income and psycho-social support.

My biggest learning in all of this is the importance of being aware of power structures and barriers – especially when they are not necessarily obvious. It can be really hard to enable people who have previously been silenced to now have a voice, and to use that voice. I remember in Learning and Participation on my first semester, this was one of the major topics, however, there is such a big difference between being in a classroom and discussing theory, and then using it in real life situations, where everything is not necessarily black and white.

I am excited to see where the rest of this journey takes me!