Written By: Ashley Sikayun, CREES Extension Agent
The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) Group Model Building (GMB) workshops took place at the end of January and early February 2023. Workshops were conducted on the 3 main islands of the CNMI, Saipan, Tinian and Rota, by the CNMI team from the Northern Marianas College Cooperative, Research, Extension and Education Services (NMC CREES) in collaboration with Dr. Peter Hovmand, Dr. Rachel Novotny and Dr. Jeannie Butel of Children’s Healthy Living (CHL) Hawaii. The purpose of these workshops is for CNMI food system partners to collaborate to draw connections between the local food system and children’s health across the CNMI in order to develop a model that will be used for exploring and implementing activities that are likely to improve what young children eat in the CNMI. The model will identify drivers of resilience that exist within our food system and their relationship with childhood food and nutrition security, healthful diets, and health.
The Saipan GMB Workshop was conducted on Tuesday, January 31, 2023, at the Saipan World Resort, with 18 participants in attendance. The Tinian and Rota workshops were conducted on the following days with the Tinian GMB on February 1st at the Bar-K Diner and the Rota GMB on February 2nd at the Puesto Grill Annex. Both the Tinian and Rota workshops had 13 participants. For all three island workshops, most of the participants were government agency partners including the Public School System (PSS) and Head Start Program, Department of Public Health, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, Mayor’s Offices, Division of Agriculture, Office of Planning and Development, Legislative Bureau, Department of Commerce and Nutrition Assistance Program (NAP). There were several private sector and nonprofit partners who also attended the workshops. In Saipan, representatives from the PSS Child Nutrition Program vendors, Herman’s Modern Bakery and Kalaayan, were in attendance. These are 2 of the main vendors that cater school meals on all three islands. Triple J Saipan, a wholesale and retailer company, and Pacific Islands Nutrition in Action, a local nutrition nonprofit, were also in attendance at the Saipan workshop. In Tinian, a representative from the Tinian Cattlemen’s Association, a nonprofit organization made up of ranchers on Tinian, was also in attendance. In Rota, two local farmers from Calvo Enterprises and Paeda Farms and a member of the Rota Chamber of Commerce also participated in the workshop.
The CNMI team is composed of 8 staff from NMC CREES. The team was thankful to have Dr. Peter Hovmand, Dr. Rachel Novotny and Dr. Jeannie Butel’s partnership in facilitating the workshops. Planning for the GMB workshops began in August 2022 soon after the CHL Annual Meeting in Hawaii with team meetings during which we reviewed the facilitation manual and workshop agenda, dissected workshop activities and roles; identified additional CREES personnel to take on some roles; identified attendee lists for each of the workshops; drafted a timeline of events and activities pre- and post-workshop; finalized logistics and planned strategic communications with the attendees to build understanding and interest in the project. As part of the strategic communications, we scheduled a pre-workshop meeting for invitees on each island on Systems Thinking with an interactive presentation by NMC CREES Interim Dean and CNMI Jurisdiction Leader Patty Coleman. Each CNMI team member personally contacted invitees with whom they personally knew. Patty introduced the concept of systems thinking and led the participants through small group discussions to practice using a systems approach. The team received much positive feedback from these pre-workshop meetings.
The focus of the GMB workshops was what influences children’s healthy eating in each respective island. We felt that having individual workshops on each island would be more beneficial than having one overall CNMI workshop because each island has its own unique needs and challenges, as well as strengths, in terms of the local food system. It was also an opportunity to allow the community from the smaller islands of Tinian and Rota to be heard.
Patty convened the workshops with introductions. Dr. Novotny gave an overview of the CHL program, CHL data from past interventions and the GMB goals. The workshop activities included Hopes and Fears, Graphs Over Time, Connection Circles and Action Ideas. Dr. Hovmand facilitated the activities with assistance from Dr. Butel and Tayna Belyeu-Camacho, Community Facilitator. At the Rota workshop, Tayna took on the challenge of modeler facilitator and facilitated the Hopes and Fears and Graphs Over Time activities. At all three workshops, participants seemed to be very engaged and on-task with discussions and activities. The Action Ideas activity generated a lot of enthusiasm from participants as groups were very eager and excited to share their ideas with the whole group.
One of the challenges the team expected to encounter was the timeframe for the Saipan, and particularly the Tinian, workshops due to the travel schedule of having to depart to the next island immediately after each workshop. The facilitators did a remarkable job of keeping with the time constraints without rushing the activities and still allowing the participants to produce a good amount of outputs.
The CNMI team worked closely with the workshop venues to serve healthful refreshments and feature locally grown produce in their dishes. In Saipan, participants were treated to local bananas and apigi, a Chamorro specialty made from grated young coconut. In Tinian, one of the dishes featured vegetables grown from the restaurant’s garden, and in Rota, locally-grown sweet potato was served, a crop Rota is known for and also one of its main exports.
There were some similar themes across all three island workshops – supporting local farmers and gardening/farming initiatives especially geared towards youth and families, the physical environment, family and cultural behavior and affordability of food. In the Tinian, physical activity was a recurring theme. In Rota, there was an emphasis on convenience, availability and accessibility of healthy food.
Follow up meetings to review each island’s causal loop diagrams were scheduled for February 16 for Saipan and February 23 for Tinian and Rota. Several participants from each island were able to provide feedback for Dr. Hovmand to make edits on the respective diagrams. Another follow up meeting is scheduled for March 9 to present and review the combined island diagrams for a CNMI model. In anticipation of the announcement of the Pilot Project RFP, the CNMI team plans to host a workshop in the coming months for interested participants and community members on the details of the pilot project opportunity as well as how to apply for the RFP.