VDS Session 5
Session 5 features Patti Iwasaki, who brings decades of experience in community engagement and partnership development across academic and community settings. Participants will hear about the practical work of building strong relationships in community-engaged science.
Presentation Outline
Patti Iwasaki has provided this outline of the content of her presentation, with resources and context.
Building local sustainability: Identifying critical transformative capacities
This article explores a conceptual framework that allows for a more nuanced, contextual understanding of how public, private and civic actors at the urban scale co-creatively build capacity for sustainability transformation.
Building Community Capacity
This 2001 book by Robert J. Chaskin and Avis Vidal focuses on a gap in social work practice theory: community change.
Resources:
- This study (Chapagain, et al., 2025) suggests that to bridge the gap between adaptive capacity and actual adaptation action, policy interventions need to be targeted: Studies on Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change
- The 4th Wheel Social Impact Consulting Firm
5 Key Elements of Capacity Building You Should Know - An article in Nonprofit Quarterly discussing how neutrality in the field of capacity-building is a myth that is no longer tenable:
Capacity Building as a Tool for Transformation
Background Resources Specific to Food Systems
Please find the following that may aid understanding food systems and terms:
Food System Infographic: Elements
Food System Elements graphic representation adapted by Christy Shi, Center for Environmental Farming Systems. From: Wilkins, J. and Eames-Sheavly, M. Discovering the Food System; An experiential learning program for young minds. Cornell University, Departments of Nutritional Science and Horticulture.
Food System Infographic: Wealth Distribution
Infographic illustrating how interconnected stages of the food system support rural wealth creation and benefit both urban and rural communities, adapted from Michael Carolan’s Rural Wealth Creation team framework.
911 Our Food System is Not Working, by Karen Washington
“We can’t talk about a fair, just, and equitable food system without radical new thinking and putting in a lot work. What sort of work needs to be done and who will be the people to do it? Karen Washington, one of the most renowned and influential food activists of our era shares her wisdom and her analysis of why the food system doesn’t need to be fixed but has to be dramatically transformed.”
Visit www.bioneers.org to watch more talks and discussions from the 2022 conference.
Food Systems Working Definitions
What is a food system? From Washington State University.
Other Links
- ASPIRE is research–please take a few minutes to help us determine the effectiveness of our work “Shifting Geoscience for Collective Change” by taking this exit survey:
ASPIRE Virtual Discussion Series Exit Ticket
