Students at Grand Valley State University, along with other local community members, banded together Friday to address what they describe as local food problems.

“This final event comes out of a new issues course, LIB 322: Wicked Problems of Sustainability,” said Danielle Lake from GVSU’s psychology department. “The course gives students the opportunity to engage in collaboration with not just one another but with a wide array of experts, community members and stakeholders. It asks students to integrate these perspectives in order to address a local ‘wicked’ issue within sustainability.”

The event, held in the Alumni House, gave students a chance to engage in an open discussion on local food issues. This format allowed attendees to help diagnose the problems the community confronts when it comes to healthy diets and create and install action plans to tackle these problems.

This semester, the students were engaged in food problems on a local scale. The initial focus was to put healthy food in the hands of young school children and encourage them to use life-long healthy eating habits. Three student groups came up with project proposals for the issue and presented them to the audience.

“When discussing Wicked Problems, we can identify multiple areas in today’s society that fit the bill—poverty, health care, education, environment, to only name a few. Just in our Grand Valley area we can find social equity issues related to poor access to food,” Lake said. “We chose to work with sustainability not only because it is inherently interdisciplinary in nature, but also because our GVSU community is dedicated to a brighter, greener, more sustainable future and because the greater West Michigan community is also very involved.”

The three proposals covered a wide variety of topics. Among these were The Food Maverick project, which aims to educate children on the Internet about healthy food by using social media. The Fresh Start Club proposed to have children gather at the GVSU Sustainable Agriculture Program (SAP) for an interactive club that will help them to gain awareness of the importance of local, fresh and sustainably grown produce.

Finally, C.A.R.R.O.T./G.A.R.D.E.N.S proposed to create events for the local community members, targeting the children and parents of urban communities. These events would aim to bring knowledge and awareness of a variety of different healthy-living and sustainability topics, such as the benefits of eating fresh, local food and the basics of gardening, saving seeds and preparing for harvest.

“Collaboration has begun, and everyone is ready and willing to work toward innovative, sustainable ideas,” said Anne Marie Fauvel from the Liberal Studies Department at GVSU. “Projects in the fields of renewable energy, agrarian food and agriculture, recycling and composting programs are sprouting up everywhere in the Grand Valley area and are perfect opportunities for GVSU students to take part in real world efforts. When dealing with wicked problems, often times, each new ideas that come to fruition creates a new series of problems. There will be no shortage of Wicked Problems to tackle in LIB 322.”