Rescued Food for Street Meals Erasmus Project

Project Title

Rescued Food for Street Meals

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 youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

“Rescued Food for Street Meals” was a strategic partnership project aimed to connect 5 partner organizations (active in the youth work areas of humanitarian work, youth volunteering and finding solutions for food waste problem) from Sweden, Belgium, Hungary, United Kingdom and Slovenia. This project was a true fusion of the experiences of partner organizations, using each organisation’s experience and expertise to create a “food revolution” in the areas of partner activity. The project allowed participants from the partner organisations involved, to educate themselves and their target groups in a variety of ways how to create innovative activities to involve youth in solving social problems of local communities. The participants learnt and shared their good practices/experience through training activities on organising “Rescued Food for Street Meals” humanitarian events, cooking, distributing food, etc. This Initiative supported the participants in their personal and professional development (knowledge, skills and attitudes). The project started on 1st of February 2016 and ended on 30th of June 2018.
According to UN Report (year 2011), over 1/3 of the world’s food for human consumption is being wasted every year. At the same time, worldwide 842 million people are experiencing hunger. Poverty and food insecurity are extremely prevalent in many European cities, making the case for food waste reduction and proper redistribution all the more important. These alarming statistics made us think about how to get actively involved into creating innovative practical solutions for burning problem of food waste. The project dealt with the growing global problem of poverty and food-crisis, which is officially stressed by the “Food group” in European Parliament, so we think that this partnership is parallel with their objectives and offers added value in finding the high-quality solutions achievable locally and globally.
The objectives of the project were:
– to build the capacity of local organisations in each partner country and to deliver projects designed to create a social movement against food waste,
– creating a European network of organizations active in youth work, humanitarian work, youth volunteering and healthy lifestyles,
– to strengthen the international project capacities of the participating organizations, participating youth workers and volunteers from partner organizations who need to improve their skills and competencies,
– to increase the quality of cooperation between civil society and national/regional authorities to promote the development of innovative educational and training systems and their integration in actions of local and regional activity.
– to raise public awareness of the great amount of food that is being wasted,- improvement and professionalisation of youth work and key competences/skills of participating youth workers (managerial skills, communication skills, getting new experience at inter-cultural learning, develop practical ICT skills etc.)
– to perform a study of existing ICT platforms related to food surplus redistribution and draw best-practices and critical success factors from them – the Belgium organization did a thorough research, and then shared it during our Skype meeting .
– creation of a methodology to enable youth to develop entrepreneurial solutions to reduce food waste or redistribute food surplus.
– creation of an ICT platform in order to redistribute food surplus form supermarkets, hospitality services, farmers, wholesalemarkets and markets to youth and social organizations. The momentum created by the project will be given long-term sustainability through the new ICT platform on food waste.
After the launch of the Intellectual output – website and training activities, the partner organisations held open-air multiplier public events “Rescued Food for Street Meals” in their respective countries aiming to inform the general public, local municipality and interested stakeholders on the food waste problem. On these events general public and stakeholders were introduced into ideas of active citizenship and volunteering and Intellectual Input and other results of the project will be presented. On each event local organisation will prepare and distribute cca 1.000 free hot healthy meals (cooked from food that would have been wasted) for socially underprivileged groups. At tsome of these events a pilote testing of Rescued Food System Mobile Application was done. A Training in Sweden was held, where participating youth workers will received documents which professionalized their competences/skills (Youthpass, Europass mobility document).In final months of the project, each organisation held a local dissemination event where they presented the project and its results. On this events local stakeholders (youth NGO’s and other educational organizations, interested stakeholders, local municipality) and media were invited for purpose of further dissemination of the project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 49570 Eur

Project Coordinator

ISKCON Almvik & Country: SE

Project Partners

• Humanitarno drustvo FFL Global
• Páratlan Ajándék Alapítvány
• Food Surplus Entrepreneurs Network asbl
• Food For All