Nowadays, when you’re zapping through television channels, reading the newspaper, surfing on the Internet, we’re usually faced with terrible news, and normally the government is blamed for the hardship in our society. However, there are few people who are dedicating time to tackle these problems in some way or another. The "Food for the Future" workshop lasted 4 wonderful days, in which members of Rikolto in Peru, Rikolto in Belgium and Ypard Peru facilitated the process and gave the participants relevant information related to food. According to the news that we read, hear or see every day, we have not stopped to really think about food sustainability for the next 30 years. In the first part of the workshop, we made a connection with the city of Huancayo based on the following question: “What are we going to eat in 2050?”. As it was expected and regarding the main interest of all the participants, it was easy to make the connection with the local food context. We put all the challenges and opportunities on paper to present it to each other. Also, we needed more time to continue filling more spaces however, the biggest challenge was just around the corner. In the second part a question was put on the table: “How can we reverse the negative aspect of the ‘research’ findings?”, this was the most complicated part. At first, we really started to feel like super heroes and super heroines, we wanted to change everything as if we had superpowers. However, we realized that the resources that we would need to change our reality are scarce. The brainstorming for our own feasible business ideas was based on the thought: ‘contributing to a global challenge by doing something local’ and ‘small actions with big impact’. Five teams came up with five different ideas: Happy Pills From the reality of cocoa producers in the rainforest of Peru, the idea of selling chocolate to students was born, to ensure the nutrition of their brain with a "candy", while improving their mood. In addition, they brought chocolate that can be used in hot beverages instead of sugar. With the sale of these products, there was an important contribution for the development of the cocoa producing cooperatives and many families in the rainforest. The public was also sensitized about the benefits of pure cocoa. Culturaecology The environment and its conservation is an important factor to ensure safe food in 2050, so Culturaecology made T-Shirts with phrases (inspired by superhero movies) redesigned in an environmental spirit. The sale of these T-shirts, paid for the Community training in responsible tourism. Also, awareness activities were conducted with youth and adults, you can see the activities and interesting information through the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/culturaecology Caffini The team highlighted a very important problem worldwide. The fact that farmers, such as coffee producers in the rainforest, of Peru do not have relevant information concerning input, soil, water, pesticides or climatic conditions, to ensure the success of their agronomic activities. Therefore, through a virtual platform, it would be easier to take important decisions based on the features mentioned before. Misky Quinua Llapanchiqpaq From the wonderful Ayacucho, next to Junin, this team provided cookies with quinoa flour, blood and other supplies, so that nutrition is promoted in a fun way (who does not like cookies?) in rural areas of Ayacucho, and thus facing chronic malnutrition. I tried the cookie and I loved it! I did not know I had blood until I was given the information of the ingredients, without a doubt a strategic way to nourish the little ones. Muña When climbing the mountains in the highlands of Peru, we can smell a characteristic aroma. This is the particular “Muña”, a herb with many medicinal properties that are good for the human being. However, it does not yet have the deserved popularity in terms of use and conservation. The Muña team made filters, cake and chocolates with Muña inside. All of this was to increase its consumption and to sensitize people to eat healthy food. During the closing ceremony on the last day, other initiatives and projects, who are already in the market, were presented. This was very useful to us and a big motivation to keep working to contribute to the objective of achieving food security, while promoting more inclusive activities. Written by Natalí Castro Santiváñez.
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As the workshop started, we had the chance to meet all the participants, to share our dreams, and our fears. During this exercise, we realized people have a lot of dreams but the most important and the one in common is to revalue agriculture and local food, and the responsibility of youth. This workshop was also very dynamic, everyone had the chance to participate and to share their ideas. During the day, we went out and visited different places in Huancayo to later put all this information together in drawings. The next step was to mix and to connect all drawings in a very nice master piece. This was full of emotions and interesting places. Also, we had the chance to interview people about the risks of food insecurity. This allowed us to know more about the perception of local people in these topics. When we came back to the workshop with all the information gathered, we started to highlight and to select the most common problems within the current topic of this activity. With this input, all the participants worked and developed their own ideas. The next week, we demonstrated all this information in a fair, where we sold and presented our ideas. We received priceless feedback, where people were pushing us to continue scaling our ideas up. This indeed increased our motivation to continue with these beautiful ideas to tackle problems on food security for the wellbeing of the region. The workshop ended with the presentation of sustainable enterprises based in Peru that came to share their experience, and to listen to our ideas. We all received very valuable input to continue working on our initiatives in the future. As a final thought, we also had a great experience interacting with people with innovative ideas, who collaborated and improved the workshop, because they offered a different point of view. This will contribute a lot in the development of our business capacity, also on an ecological and social level. By Grace Oseda Villafuerte, FFTF Huancayo participant.
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