This spring, the Nourishing Communities Research Group hosted a one-day workshop in Ottawa which brought together researchers and community partners who were working on diverse food initiatives with a social or informal purpose, in diverse communities from Atlantic Canada to the Northwest Territories.
The purpose of the workshop was to think about evaluation, indicators, and metrics—ways of measuring and reporting that are useful and relevant for social and informal economy projects. These indicators would help researchers do comparative work while identifying commonalities and gaps, and help everyone to communicate outcomes in a way that would be intuitive to those without food systems background; useful to other social and informal food initiatives; and useful to influence policy-makers and funders.