The 20 Harvest Challenge is accepting expressions of interest from teachers in the Abbotsford and Chilliwack School Districts who would like to host a Dig for Your Rights! pilot program in their classroom
during February and March 2024.
Collaborate with Dr. Superle to meet your curriculum goals and support innovative research on rights-based programming to support food security and sovereignty in our community!
FOOD Museum
Photos Taken by Amanda Minchau, Sydney Marchand, & Camryn Longmuir
The 20 Harvest Challenge provides all the tools to make the program easy for you to implement, including:
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UNCRC posters, including hand-held cards with the relevant individual UNCRC articles on them
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The “knowledge measure” of before and after questionnaires
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Suggested program activities and timelines
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Class use of picture books to support literacy circle activities
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Art supplies to support creative activities
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One notebook per student for reflective journaling
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One field trip
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Extension project: community letter writing campaign (based on the picture book, What Grew in Larry’s Garden), in conjunction with Chilliwack Schools Garden program
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Extension project: Food Museum + Challenge
Interested? Please email: 20harvestchallenge@gmail.com
What sparked the Dig for Your Rights! program?
Dr. Superle is fascinated by narratives about food generally and agriculture specifically—not simply because they’re interesting, but also for their potential to influence readers.
In 2019, she received a SSHRC Insight Development grant to fund the project “From Rural Idyll to Food Sovereignty: Assessing the Impact of Agricultural Portrayals in Children's Picture Books.” This investigation seeks to answer the question: can picture books help children understand food systems and sovereignty?
Superle explores this question through two sub-questions:
1. How have agricultural activities been represented in the images and text of children’s picture books from various cultural traditions and time periods?
AND
2. How effective are picture books about agriculture used as tools aid in anchoring a rights-based, participatory educational program, and how do they not only help children understand key food security concepts, but also to inspire them to participate in local food systems—or better still, food sovereignty initiatives?
What is the program?
This exploration is addressed in the Dig for Your Rights! pilot program that Superle has developed in collaboration with Dr. Lenore Newman (FAI Director) and Dr. Lesley Jessiman (Associate Professor, Department of Psychology). Dig for Your Rights! uses the educational potential of picture books in a rights-based literary program to engage children in problem-based learning around food security and sovereignty. The pilot program investigates how effective visual and textual representations of agriculture in picture books are for helping children in elementary schools understand and participate in their local food systems.
