More than 200 School Children in Madrid benefit from the Annual Food Agenda's Food Education Kit

The Annual Food Agenda project has strengthened one of its strategic implementation areas, the schools offering a set of activities to promote Food Education through this Education Tool Kit under partnership agreements that aims to reach 15 schools in Europe between Finland, Spain and Poland.

The health situation due to the COVID pandemic has delayed the implementation of this strategy to the second half of the year. For this reason, the project coordinator IMDEA Food has been the first partner developing workshops in two schools in Madrid to promote the EducationToolkit reaching more than 200 school children of primary and secondary grade.

The sessions have been led by nutritionists and scientific experts from IMDEA Alimentación who have used the different knowledge scenarios proposed by the educational kit, dealing with topics such as microbiota, targeted nutrition and food sustainability.

The students have also completed pre- and post-activity evaluation questionnaires, whose results provide high-value output for the project, demonstrating the potential of Annual Food Agenda to connect with the new generations and introduce small lessons that help them to change their behaviour regarding sustainable and healthy food consumption.

In the coming weeks, during the month of November and December, the other partners involved in the school strategy will organize several workshops in the schools with the tools provided in the toolkit, reaching teachers from Poland, England and Finland.

The Education Tool Kit is the result of almost 3 years of cooperation between food researchers, nutritionists, experts from leading agrifood companies and educators from 4 European countries #AnnualFoodAgenda have joined forces to address the common goal of EIT Food #AnnualFoodAgenda, improve eating habits of consumers and increase their trust in the food sector in Europe.

During this time, the project have created many educational materials for evidence-based dissemination, as well as, engaging with school teachers and pupils has always been a crucial and integral part of #AnnualFoodAgenda.  For this reason and to further develop activities with this target group, the project prepared this Education Toolkit a set of simple guidelines that could be used to launch off or revisit ways on a successful collaboration with school teachers and pupils.

Working with schools sounds simple, but how do you get started? In the first part of this toolkit, you will find valuable tips on how to create, develop and sustain your own network of contacts based on mutual trust, understanding and successful communication. In the second part of this toolkit, you will learn how to put cooperation with schools into practice. In the years 2019 - 2020 the Annual Food Agenda organized around 70 food-related events and we want to share with you some selected examples to help you build your own portfolio of exciting activities for school stakeholders.

The #AnnualFoodAgenda is a public engagement project powered by EIT Food which is leading food innovation initiative in Europe, working to make the food system more sustainable, healthy and trusted. The initiative is made up of a consortium of key industry players, startups, research centres and universities from across Europe. It is one of eight Innovation Communities established by the European Institute for Innovation & Technology (EIT), an independent EU body set up in 2008 to drive innovation and entrepreneurship across Europe.

EIT Food #AnnualFoodAgenda aims to engage with consumers of different ages, encouraging them to think about the food they eat and connecting them with different actors of the entire food value chain. Through a set of edutaining events the project wants to rebuild consumers’ trust in the food system, improve their knowledge on healthy eating habits, as well as raise their understanding on how food production and consumption impacts our environment.

The Annual Food Agenda is coordinated by IMDEA Food with the participation of 10 key partners including food industry companies, universities and research centres, coming from 4 European countries such us: Poland (Maspex and Institute of Animal Reproduction an Food Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Food Bank in Olsztyn) Spain (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Grupo AN), United Kingdom (University of Cambridge and PepsiCo), Finland (VTT), the CLC (EIT Food Co-Location Centres) of the South and North-East. In addition, we have external contributors from Turkey and Romania.

#AnnualFoodAgenda activities are designed to inspire debate and foster dialogue between experts and consumers. Using dynamics of co-creation, the project has been designed to encourage exchange among academia, industry, producers and consumers in everyday environments. The ultimate goal of this project is to inspire new generations of consumers ready to dive into the food jour- ney and take up careers that would help transform our food system.

The AnnualFoodAgenda is aligned with EIT Food’s vision to build a world where everybody can access and enjoy sustainable, safe, and healthy food – with trust and fairness from farm to fork. This project develops a new communication culture where activities are designed to support EIT Food’s objectives by creating public engagement events around the following topics:

• Circular Food System
• Alternative Proteins
• Targeted Nutritio
• Sustainable Agriculture