Organic Cooks in Public Settings Erasmus Project

Project Title

Organic Cooks in Public Settings

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 : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Agriculture, forestry and fisheries

Project Summary

Public catering plays an important role in modern public food service provision and thus contributes to every-day well-being of a very large number of citizens. The central concern of public catering has traditionally been nutritional; recently, new emphasis has been placed on environmental, local economy and sensory aspects of the public meal.
In many European countries there is a considerable public attention on public providing of daily meals and increasing demand on public organic food procurement especially for youth. There are many reasons, why the integration of organic food become a great importance since last years.
Processing of regional organic food in public catering service is an important factor to enhance regional supply chains, and helps developing organic markets on local regional and national level and thus contributing to sustainable development of rural areas.
The overall aim of the project is to contribute to sustainable and healthy nutrition in public catering facilities through bringing more sustainable way of using resources into public serving outlets through the development of new and innovative ways of teaching and learning about “organic cooking in public settings”. Specific objectives of the project were to develop a. an ECVET-based curriculum for training of “organic cooks” esp. for public catering settings, b. an interactive IT-tool to organic cooking in public kitchens and c. a Handbook dealing with introducing organic and local food in public settings.
The partner consortium consists of 6 partners from 5 countries. The consortium covered a broader spectrum of partners active in different sectors: University of South Bohemia – Faculty of Agriculture (CZ) as a research and educational institution dealing with topics of sustainable agriculture, alternative systems of farming; Vestyjland Folk High School (DK) skilled in providing courses to organic cooking and farming and running organic canteen and organic garden; AIAB Liguria (IT) – association bringing together farmers, practitioners, experts, researchers and consumers intensivelly cooperating with 18 AIAB-offices acting in different regions of Italy; Thuringian Consumer Advice Center – Network Unit for School Catering (DE) with rich experiences in advising and cooperation with public cantees; Center of Environmental Activities (SK) – non-profit organisation experienced in cooperation projects with school canteens – implementation of organic food in the school canteens and in environmental education; project coordinator Thüringer Ökoherz (DE) promoting sustainable ways of living and the advancement of ecological agriculture in Thuringia and Germany, experienced in coordination and participation in several European projects.
Following main project activities have been realised in order to reach planned results and impacts by the project:
– Development of the cook.org curriculum – an innovative educational material for complementary qualification of organic cooks in public settings based on ECVET-standards. The training of “Organic cooks in Public Settings” intends to enlarge and deepen the classical training with focus on using organic food and running a kitchen in a sustainable way.
– Development of the web-based cook.org IT-tool with integrated RecipeApp, supporting the integration of sustainable cooking with organic and regional products into daily meals in public kitchens. It provides knowledge and proposes concrete actions and recipes for practicing of organic, seasonal and regional cooking evaluating the sustainability of planned menus.
– Development of Handbook “Greening public canteens”, introducing most important basic information regarding the integration of organic, regional and seasonal cooking in public kitchens. The handbook provides assistance for public kitchens in a conversion process. One of the main objectives of the handbook is to convey the knowledge and experience about how public canteens can find the way to sustainability, especially by using more organic, regional and seasonal products in their daily practice.
All mentioned project outputs are free available in 6 European languages.
– Realisation of the pilot course in order to test applicability and the quality of developed outputs as well as to establish an exchange between the project partners and representatives of the target groups.
– Realisation of events for multipliers in all partner countries aimed on different target groups to promote project results as well as to initiate the cooperation and possibilities for future implementation of project results into educational as well as cooking practice.
– Awareness raising about sustainable nutrition and importance of integration of organic food into daily meals in public settings through multiplier events and different dissemination channels.
In all participating countries, the project results are in use or in the process of further development respectively integration into existing systems.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 331074,85 Eur

Project Coordinator

Thüringer Ökoherz e.V. & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Vestjyllands Højskole
• JIHOCESKA UNIVERZITA V CESKYCH BUDEJOVICICH
• Centrum environmentálnych aktivít
• AIAB Liguria
• Verbraucherzentrale Thüringen e.V.