Dr Shobi Nagraj – Addressing childhood malnutrition during the COVID-19 pandemic
Volunteering opportunities for University of Oxford students in partnership with the Sheila Kitzinger programme on Childhood Malnutrition at Green Templeton College
Opportunities for Hands-on research and data gathering to inform the Food Strategy for Oxfordshire in partnership with Good Food Oxford and Oxford City Council:
What this might look like:
- Helping to develop and refine simple google-based questionnaires or plan small focus groups with members of the community
- Going out and about in the community and partner organisations to collect responses or running focus groups
- Summarising findings, basic data analysis and drawing conclusions, – summary reports or blogs
Data gathering would likely be around the topics outlined below – note these would need refining into meaningful/ analysable questions but this is to give a flavour of the areas that we would like to explore. It would be interesting to compare answers from different locations, e.g., at a farmer’s market vs lower income residential/shopping areas/ at foodbanks.
We are aware that much of the data gathered will be anecdotal and sample sizes unlikely to be statistically significant, however the aim is to provide a snapshot and some insights into people’s real-life experiences.
You would be supported in this by the Good Food Oxfordshire Team and we would arrange access to participants where appropriate.
Project 1: What matters to people
How important/achievable are the following, and what are the barriers to achieving the following:
• Healthy diet
• Reducing the climate impact of their diet (do people even know how to do this?)
• Buying locally sourced produce
• Supporting local independent shops
Project 2: What are people eating? This may feed into the Community Insights project
This project seeks to understand the Nutritional habits, nutritional knowledge and barriers to eating a healthy diet in Oxfordshire, and will be supported and in partnership with Oxford Mutual Aid and local foodbanks.
Project 3: Growing food and produce
Behaviours and attitudes towards growing – do people grow food at home? If so, what do they grow/how/where? What are the barriers to growing at home? What support do people want?
Project 4: Understanding shopping habits of local people in different localities#
Where do people get their food – supermarkets, corner shops, markets, larders, grow their own? Compare different areas of Oxfordshire to enable comparisons and link to external factors (food infrastructure, socio-economics, cultural habits).
Project 5: Fruit and vegetable price comparisons
To compare costs of fruit and vegetables e.g., cost of broccoli and a banana in local/ corner shops different localities around Oxfordshire compared with major supermarkets, to identify barriers to accessing affordable, healthy food.
Project 6: Views of local food businesses
Questionnaires with local shop keepers in a range of localities about what products they stock, which are best sellers, how much fresh fruit and veg they sell – barriers to selling this, how much waste they have, where they source their fruit and veg. What would help? Do they redeem Healthy Start Vouchers? Interviews with organisers of local markets – what they need to stay functioning during the pandemic.
Other volunteering opportunities
Oxfordshire Pumpkin Festival
Get involved with events being run as part of this festival. More information
Volunteer Cooking Tutor Training Programme
We are rolling out our volunteer cooking tutor training programme so there could be the potential for students to train as volunteer cooking tutors and then run sessions locally (some of the dates and venues have already elapsed but if this is of interest we do have some more dates and could be flexible around further courses if sufficient interest and funding)
Community Food Services
There are over 100 Community Food Services across Oxfordshire who are part of GFO’s community food network (see map below). We can support with connections to these if students want to volunteer – note most would be looking for regular commitments. More information
