The Pandemic
One of the obstacles we faced while conducting our research was our inability to meet in person due to the pandemic. Initially, we wanted to conduct interviews with those who are positioned to make decisions regarding school food nutrition; but with the constraints of the COVID-19 restrictions, this proved to be too difficult. However, after checking in with our community partner, we found that we could still engage with these power players via email.
Time
Another one of the obstacles we faced was the time constraints. Due to the non-traditional ten-week semester, there was a limited amount of time to conduct research. Even though we had so many ideas on ways we wanted to help our community partner, we really had to prioritize the most important deliverables and make them as strong and helpful as possible for Grow Hartford.
Federal Control
One of our biggest obstacles we also faced during our research was the federal control over local school food decisions. Due to schools having to adhere to USDA guidelines, our recommendations to Grow Hartford were limited to an extent, because schools themselves cannot fight federal policy. As a result of this obstacle, we focused instead on helping Grow Hartford encourage the expansion of holistic food nutrition and programming in Hartford Public Schools. Through our identification of the state and local power players, Grow Hartford can contact and utilize the strategies we provided in our research to motivate power players to help, engage, and eventually advocate for the organization’s commitment to building more just food systems in Hartford and beyond.