Coast Mountain College students embodied community spirit this week, surprising some fellow students with delicious meals as a way of building community during COVID-19. 

Called the Thoughtful Food project, it was developed as part of an assignment in the Business Administration program’s Project Management 270 course. The assignment was to find ways to build community during the ongoing pandemic. 

“These projects have real budget, so they will be actually spending money. They run it like a project, they have to submit expense forms, they have to time manage, run reports,” says CMTN instructor, Karen McMurray.  

Students were divided into groups and the Thoughtful Food group landed on the idea that traditional food can bring comfort to students who are a long way from home. For many international students, being in a new country is filled with challenges: a new culture, different language, a new way of learning and being a world away from their loved ones. And being an international student living away from home during a pandemic is extra challenging. 

With the help of Abhi  from Chef Abhi’s restaurant in Terrace, delicious meals were prepared, cooked and delivered to students who had been selected through nominations received by the group.  

Experiential learning at Coast Mountain College gives students to learn both in the classroom (even when those classrooms are virtual) but also through forging connections in community. In an online learning environment, with the extra challenges of the pandemic, coming together can be difficult. But the students took into consideration pandemic protocols and were innovative enough to make the project come together. And with students located both in the region and as far away the Interior of BC and Calgary, Alberta, they proved that community can be built, despite distance. 

This group ran with the learning opportunity and did create a project from start to finish that met the assigned goals. I am very proud of their results and their learning,” says McMurray.