Achieving Motivation

Despite everyone having enthusiasm to change their lives for the better, they also encounter barriers that hold them back and deflate their enthusiasm.  This balance between enthusiasm (the size of your balloon) and barriers (how much we deflate it) is really key.

We’ve learned there are many more barriers facing those in poverty to improving their diets than the rest of the population.  They are economic, psychological, structural and practical.  Each of these helps to deflate the incentive balloon until often there is very little motivation left.

Different people experience different barriers; one person for example may have problems with food access; another may live next to Tescos, but not have a pan to cook with. Usually it’s a combination of several. We discussed some of these in our earlier blog in this series. It is only if you can tackle many individuals’ different barriers simultaneously in the same programme, that you will be able to do this at scale, as we do at Bags of Taste.

You can learn more about the barriers facing people in poverty here by watching this video.

What is left when the barriers have deflated your balloon

We can’t remove every barrier.  I may not be able to move you closer to the shops.  But we can change other parts of the equation, so there is still some motivation left.  I could tell you where the cheapest shop is, which bus to take to get there, and explain to you how much you could save if you went there.

Thus we remove part of the barrier (how do I get there?), and fill the balloon with more enthusiasm, making the starting balloon size bigger (look how much money I can save!), there’s still some enthusiasm left in the motivation balloon after realising the shops are not that close.

This is the key to how Bags of Taste works.   By understanding and tackling all these barriers at once, whilst also upping the enthusiasm, we can ensure that there is still enough motivation for our participants to cook healthy food for themselves at home.