Food shapes Europe: Promoting Food Awareness and Responsible Inclusive Entrepreneurship in the European Market Erasmus Project

Project Title

Food shapes Europe: Promoting Food Awareness and Responsible Inclusive Entrepreneurship in the European Market

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Environment and climate change; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

Food shapes us. The importance of food in our lives cannot be denied. All human beings depend on it in the same way, but they get to live that experience in many different ways. The way we relate to food will affect our personal health, but also our environment. These days, that connection between the buyer and the product in origin has been lost. We no longer know for sure who is behind what we buy and how these food products have been produced. The distance between the consumer and the producer has increased dramatically, up to a point of no return, in which a regular consumer knows nothing about the manufacturers, the former farmers having been substituted by big industries. Moreover, we are used to seeing insane amounts of food at markets and supermarkets as if food was an unlimited resource at the reach of anyone. Unfortunately, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Many people in the world suffer from starvation, and not only in the so-called Third World countries now known as developing countries, but also in our own countries and our own cities within Europe. This project will try to connect the dots and offer our students the opportunity to develop a responsible and civic citizenship and a positive relationship with food at all levels. Our project, Food Shapes Europe will be carried out by three different schools, Escola Pàlcam from Spain, Stadtgymnasium Köln-Porz from Germany, and Istituto Istruzione Superiore Statale Pio La Torre from Italy. The three schools share the same perspective and objectives in terms of environmental awareness and responsible consumerism towards our students. All students, teachers and members of the school communities will be invited to participate in some of the events and activities that will be carried out. About 100 students aged 14 to 16 and a team of teachers of all the European partner schools will be the ones in charge of participating in the mobilities and carrying out the core of activities and products of the project. They will also be acting as Erasmus+ ambassadors and will be in charge of disseminating the findings of the project among their own families and friends. We would like this project to be a life-changing and eye-opening experience for those students involved, and to be able to increase its impact to anyone interested in improving their health, in being more respectful and responsible with the environment and being aware and committed to those who are in need. By doing first-hand research, the participants will be able to discover the processes of production and distribution of food and their effects on the environment, proper and balanced diets and our health and how food banks and NGOs operate. Out of this research, the students will be creating some learning materials in the form of an e-book about healthy habits in connection to food. Moreover, they will be giving their support to local NGOs and food banks by promoting and starting awareness and support initiatives in their schools. In addition, the participants will be in charge of disseminating their results and findings by holding project days at the schools and welcoming families, the local press and relevant stakeholders. In the second year of the project, the students will be developing business plans and advertising campaigns for a simulated food company that will come out of a needs analysis of their own communities. Conclusions will be drawn out of their business plans that will be used to promote positive change in companies and even the government in their own societies. All the activities aim at developing skills in our students, raising their awareness on the current situation and promoting positive changes in their habits as consumers and as citizens in general. We believe we can only achieve those objectives if we empower our students by putting them at the center of the learning process. In order to do that, we will be following a combination of PBL, Problem-Based Learning, and cooperative work methodologies. All the project activities will be set as problems to be solved by the students, who, with the use of new technologies, will be doing research, cooperating and negotiating in international groups as they look for possible solutions to those problems. All the products of this project will be shared with Creative Commons licenses so anyone can benefit from all those activities of our project. We expect this project to have an impact on all its participants at many levels. They will be given the necessary tools to improve their understanding of the whole process of food production, to become more aware of the issues caused by it, such as pollution and hunger, and to be able to improve their own attitudes and relationship with them, as they strive to become committed members of their societies and develop a responsible civic engagement in their cities, their countries and within the whole EU. Food shapes us, but we can also shape ourselves in order to shape a better Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 98196 Eur

Project Coordinator

Stadtgymnasium Köln-Porz & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Istituto Istruzione Superiore Statale Pio La Torre
• Liceo Palcam SLU