ASSOCIATION FRANCOPHILE D’HAAPSALU: “The place of vegetables in children’s daily lives”

Project location: Haapsalu and Tallinn – Estonia

This project aims at making children aged from 5 to 7 years old aware of the various ways of eating vegetables and the importance of eating vegetables on a daily basis. It also promotes the image of French products and France, a guarantee of quality and, raises family awareness through children on the subject of regular vegetable intake.

The Francophile association of ‘Haapsalu works to promote French culture, and the important topic of healthy eating by using this brand image to promote vegetables among children.

LA MAISONNETTE DES PARENTS: ‘Potager à partager” (A vegetable garden to share)

Project location: Neighbourhood of la Petite Prairie – Montreal – Canada

This project aims at creating areas promoting gardening centres on school and institutional grounds. It also aims at creating awareness and learning initiatives based on knowledge development as well as setting up a programme with a holistic approach to promote the consumption of vegetables.

The learning of gardening and cooking will awaken children’s food curiosity by tasting the vegetables they would have grown. By combining permaculture and nutrition education, the association aims at increasing the consumption of vegetables among children aged from 0 to 14 years old and their families.

AIDE POUR LE DÉVELOPPEMENT DURABLE (ADD) (Support for Sustainable Development): « Priorité aux légumes » (Priority given to vegetables)

Project location: Public elementary school from the rural commune of Vinaninkarena – Madagascar

The objective of the project is to improve the working conditions and nutritional status of children at school with meaningful, sustainable and educational solutions to anchor vegetables in their eating habits by distributing in the school canteen healthy balanced meals made with local vegetables and also by passing on through playful methods information on nutrition and on the various ways of preparing vegetables.

The daily consumption of vegetables at the school canteen will support children’s preference and thus the parents’ ones for this type of food. In fact, the parents are directly involved in the daily routines of the school canteen; indeed they not only participate in the preparation and distribution of the meals, but also take part in the shopping activities; prompting them to use the recipes at home. In addition, educational activities are offered, such as learning the positive health aspects of vegetables or tutorials on culinary preparations using vegetables as the main ingredients.

CENTRE SOCIAL LA BUSETTE (social centre): “Funny vegetables”: Playful discovery of vegetables”

Project location: Social centre of La Busette – Lille (59) – France

The aim of this association is to give to children, aged from 3 to 6 years old, exposure to recipes made with unusual vegetables that are tasty, funny and look pretty: because one also eats with its eyes, children never get fed up with attracting and colourful plates!

Cooking is a time for experiencing discovery, pleasure and a time to share between children. This project will enable them to:

• Enrich their vocabulary (identify, express, name the vegetables)
• Discover recipes made with vegetables
• Understand the importance of eating vegetables at every meal
• Discover various ways of eating vegetables
• Pursuit the action at home (by eating vegetables at home)

UNION RÉGIONALE DES CENTRES PERMANENTS D’INITIATIVES POUR L’ENVIRONNEMENT CENTRE VAL DE LOIRE (URCPIE Centre Val de Loire) (association for the environment) “A picnic to get involved”

Project location: Centre Val de Loire Region (37) – France

During some school picnics, the association has identified 2 main facts:

First, the amount of vegetables available in the lunch packs of the children was rather limited; secondly the food waste and production of waste were rather significant. The project “Je pique-nique, je m’implique” (a picnic to get involved) therefore aims at:

– giving more room to vegetables in the picnic basket by raising awareness among children about vegetable taste and by stressing how important they are at meal time. It also intends to develop good eating habits with the increase consumption of vegetables (discover the wide variety of vegetables available, nutritional value, taste quality, health impact).

-learning about the issues of food waste reduction and waste reduction

– giving the children the right tools to educate their parents about the change in practices now used to prepare a “sustainable” and nutritionally balanced picnic basket.

Through its associative network, the association works in the territory of the Val de Loire, to teach about the environment and sustainable development through educational activities targeting all age groups.

MAISON DE LA NATURE ET DE L’ENVIRONNEMENT – RÉSEAU D’ ÉDUCATION A LA NATURE ET A L’ENVIRONNEMENT DU GARD (MNE-RENE 30): “I grow my own vegetables and it is a real delight!”

Project location: Alès agglomeration – Gard (30) – France

The association’s project is aimed at 150 children, aged from 6 to 11 years old, and enrolled in primary school in the agglomeration of Alès. An environmental educator accompanies the children who participate to the educational and playful workshops on cultivation (vegetable gardens located within the schools), seasonal vegetables tasting and significance. Together with the educator they have created a gazette, a small newspaper focusing on valorisation and communication. This project will allow children to discover vegetables with new eyes and encourage them to eat more of them, become sensitive and thoughtful when making their own food choices.

CENTRE D’INITIATIVES LOCALES POUR LE DÉVELOPPEMENT DE L’EMPLOI ET DES ACTIVITÉS (CILDEA): ” What is a vegetable: a fruit, a root, a seed…?”

Project location: Loire-Atlantique department (42) – France

During the 2016/2017 school year, the association will get involved with 600 school pupils and junior high school students to raise awareness about the importance of their food choices. Local premises (canteen; school garden…) will be used as well as material such as storyboards: from the seed to the plant, from the flower to the fruit.

The children will be able to discover the origin of their food and the environmental impacts the content of their plates may have.

The activities proposed will be tailored to suit each age range and will allow the children to understand the interactions between the vegetables and the environment (soil, water, insects…). They will help them to identify the vegetables and to perceive them “differently”. The children will learn to recognise them, touch them, taste them and find out how they grow… Cooking workshops (cakes with courgettes, vegetable sweets, etc…) as well as gardening work will complement the activities.

The CILDEA association’s desire is to generate people’s curiosity, and restore the credibility of vegetables.

SYNDICAT MIXTE OUVERT (SYMO) CUISINE DES CÉSARS: “Learn about fruits and vegetables; enjoy eating them”

Project location: Primary schools (cycles 2 and 3) from the municipalities of the SYMO -– Nevers (58) – France

This public establishment wants to offer educational activities focusing on balance diets, nutrition, fruits and vegetables. The children discover the vegetables, prepare them with a chef and eat them in every imaginable way. In addition to the awareness raising about balance diets and nutrition made by the dietician of the SYMO, these activities aim at promoting vegetables, at discovering and identifying the wide variety, and at enjoying their nutritional values as well as their cooking ones.

The aim is to:

–  teach children about the principles of a healthy and balanced diet,

– teach them to recognise the vegetables, use and transform the vegetables (the various families of fruits and vegetables) and without waste.

– make sure the children become informed consumers when adults.

ÉCO-CITOYENNETÉS: “Reconquest vegetables and pulses for our health and our planet”

Project location: Territory of the haute vallée de l’Aude (11) – France

Thanks to this project and for the second year in a row, the association carries on reconciling children and young teenagers with vegetables and pulses. It wishes to create a link between the crop and the product consumed in order to give young people the desire and the ability to control their food to ensure a healthier and better balanced diet.

The project aims at providing the young people from the Haute Vallée de l’Aude with the means to change their food behaviours about vegetables and pulses by organising fun and interactive events such as taste workshops, cooking sessions and visits to the market gardeners.

CRAQUE-BITUME: “Let’s sow with the little ones”

Project location: Quebec – Canada

The project aim of this Canadian association is to familiarise 160 children aged from 2 to 5 with the wide variety of vegetables. Activities related to food and gardening targeting early childhood environments (children aged from 2 to 5) of Quebec will take place.

Through the planned events, the children will be able to discover the wide variety of vegetables available and the various food supply chain stages: from the field to the plate thanks to fun activities using the 5 senses. It is never too early to start exposing children (from 2 to 5) to vegetables so that they can develop a keen interest and appetite for them making it easier to transform it into a habit.

Fun workshops will take place to arouse their natural curiosity; for instance:

1. Recognition and familiarisation with seasonal vegetables (using colours, tastes, smells, and textures).
2. Tasting, growing shoots and germination (peas, corn, cabbage, radish, etc.)
3. Help to the creation of a small vegetable garden (design, sowing, planting, maintaining, harvesting)

Consequently the children will be able to learn about the vegetables origin, the vegetable crops requirements and their growth process. Finally, the project set up by the association will also enable 16 educators to become autonomous: they will indeed be trained and given resources and materials to be operational. Hence the work done by the association around vegetables will be able to go on once the association’s events are over.

ASSOCIATION ARTPICULTURE: “The vegetable garden, the heart of the school”

Project location: 10 rural villages from the Hautes-Pyrénées department (65) – France

Artpiculture will go to a community of municipalities to create vegetable gardens in 10 schools and will train 10 facilitators to agro-ecology activities using active pedagogy methods. Thanks to this project, 600 children aged from 6 to 11 will be able to:

– discover the biodiversity found in a vegetable garden,

– discover the pleasure of cooking “home-made” meals prepared with the vegetables from the garden, share them with others, and not only taste them at school but also with their parents or grand-parents,

– learn the notions of a balanced diet and find out about physical activities.

The topics used in the workshops are directly related to the seasons:

– Sequence 1- From Back To School to Halloween: Design the garden, prepare the soil, organise the spaces, soil amendment, grow the first vegetable seedlings and spread organic fertiliser [lifecycle of a plant/ plant cover/ soil life]. Cook readily reproducible recipes made with seasonal fruits and vegetables.

– Sequence 2- From Halloween to Christmas: Follow and extend the project, build the Plessis, sow some aromatic plants and some small fruit trees [vegetative propagation (cutting beds, stowing), Plessis technic]. Cook readily reproducible recipes made with seasonal fruits and vegetables.

– Sequence 3- From Christmas to February: Finalise the project, design, set-up and install sign posts to inform passers-by [pollination and fruit…]. Cook readily reproducible recipes made with seasonal fruits and vegetables.

– Sequence 4 – From February to Easter: Sow, plant, maintain (mulching, cleaning, weeding, harrowing, staking, watering…) [plant associations; beneficial insects in the garden, proper care of plants]. Cook readily reproducible recipes made with seasonal fruits and vegetables.

– Sequence 5 – From Easter to End of Year: Sow again, plant again, follow up and maintain. Take the time to enjoy. Harvest and promote [flowers and vegetable recognition, needs of the plants, water & garden]. Cook readily reproducible recipes made with seasonal fruits and vegetables.

FREEGAN PONY: “Fine taste workshops”

Project location: Pantin, Aubervilliers, Paris (75) – France

The project aims at raising awareness among high school students to the endless possibilities of recipes with plant-based products, via:

– tasting original recipes made with vegetables that are to be thrown away

– valuing spoiled or ugly vegetables in recipes

– inspiring young people to be bold when cooking, offer them simple, delicious, healthy and quick recipes easy to prepare at home.

The association aims at becoming a benchmark in terms of food best practices (balanced, nutritional, healthy…)

MAISON DE QUARTIER DE ROSENDAËL CENTRE (community centre of Rosendael): « Les p’tits toqués » (the little “chefs”)

Project location: Dunkerque (59) – France

This project intends to provide children with some knowledge and understanding about vegetables. To teach them how to cook vegetables and tell them where vegetables come from. Nutritional education and taste discovery are the 2 main transversal objectives targeted by all the sectors of the community centre, the nursery halt, the child-minding facilities and the activities proposed to the adults.

The association focuses on practicing to embed knowledge. The project mainly focuses on vegetables and their diversity. They will be prepared raw, cooked and served in many different ways to trigger the pleasure of tasting. “Do It Yourself” is very rewarding for the child and suppress the frequent attitudes of refusal children may have for some vegetables, especially the unknown ones.

We intend to contribute to the good health of our users, help to inculcate good eating habits through the increase in the intake of vegetables.

Cooking workshops will be organised and chaired by an expert; after each session, the children will create supports, materials to learn, memorise the vegetables used (quizzes, memory games, vegetable profiles, recipe book). Then the materials/supports created will be used for the activities taking place in the community centre (games in the child-minding facilities, the recipe book in the cooking workshop designed for teenagers and adults, etc…)

To promote this action, the P’tits Toqués will participate to various events such as the Soup Festival.

CITÉ NATURE: « Croc ’Expo, les fruits, les légumes et moi » (Crunch ‘Exhibition on fruits, vegetable and myself”)

Project location: Arras (62) – France

Croc ‘Expo is a temporary exhibition dedicated to children aged from 3 to 12. It will be inaugurated on the 17th of March 2017 at the Cité Nature in Arras. The exhibition route will take us from the vegetable garden to health via talks, gastronomy and sustainable development. This 800 sq. metre interactive and playful exhibition intends to increase awareness among children about the importance of a regular daily intake of fruits and vegetables by promoting the wide variety of fruits and vegetables available, by telling them how to grow them and by enticing them to eat more of them for a better health.

Handlings, games, odorama space and other educational supports will be given the focus. Many events such as seasonal markets, tastings and nutritionist conferences, etc.; will come to complete the exhibition.

EDULIA L’ASSO: “Vegetable culture”

Project location: Pyrénées Orientales (66) – France

The project, targeting the pupils of elementary schools and colleges of the Pyrénées orientales, aims at increasing awareness about the wide variety of vegetables available, their histories, production (botany and agriculture), at creating benchmarks to include them in a varied, diversified and nutritious diet. It also aspires to deliver sustainable knowledge. Culture, usually lacking when one talks about vegetables, is key to holding the interest of consuming vegetables and maintaining dietary diversity.

Vegetables are made of nutrients but also of history, geography, botany, preconceived ideas, perceptions and agriculture. This cultural knowledge opens up to a brand new world waiting to be discovered so we no longer have to be afraid of eggplant!

The project is made of two phases that can supplement each other over the long term and have school-college links. The workshops are interactive: experiments, handling, tasting, with always a track of what has been seen or done by the pupils via the creation of a booklet or a notebook.

ŒUVRES DE DON BOSCO (Bosco donations): “School gardens and food fortification for disadvantaged and vulnerable young people”.

Project location: Community & training centre and youth centres – town of Bakanja – Democratic Republic of Congo.

The project not only intends to promote gardening activities but also to value the children participating in, to make them discover new vegetables, both in production and preparation, to educate them about the importance of vegetables and to provide them with additional nutritional intakes.

The first step will consist in developing, with the help of the children, small plots of land to make them more fertile and secure them. Then, the children will be able to cultivate seasonal vegetables that are familiar to them. Next, they will gradually learn about new, less known and consumed vegetables (peppers, leeks, carrots, tomatoes, onions, celeriac), how to grow them and prepare them. Creating awareness about taste and about these not well known vegetables will be vital, so will be the introduction of natural insect pest management approaches. The project will be implemented through playful and educational methods, as well as participation to cooking sessions led by the youngsters, and by sitting down with them around a table.

In Haut-Katanga, farming represents a large share of the economy families; it is nonetheless undervalued, especially in terms of jobs. Besides, the crops are not very diverse, resulting in food supply low in mineral, vitamins and micronutrients. In addition, street children usually come from very poor families which cannot afford, in most cases, more than one meal a day. The project, which will take place over 9 months and include some literacy sessions (learning the name of vegetables), will enable the children to increase their food intakes especially in terms of micronutrients thanks to the vegetables they would have produced and cooked.

ARO VELONA: “Nutritional education; an integral part of learning at the Tsara Fianatra centre”

Project location: Ambotofinandrahana – Madagascar

This project is part of an on-going effort to teach more than 200 children suffering from hunger and malnutrition, a sustainable knowledge about vegetables through vegetable farming activities and the purchase of plants which will not only allow perpetuating the activities initiated during the project but also initiating them to a healthy and balanced diet with a view to change their farming and food habits.

The wide variety of activities taking place all year long (drawing sessions, games about general culture and knowledge, puppets shows, cooking workshops, exhibitions, creation of a vegetable garden and of an orchard…) will enable to raise awareness and help them understand in a fun way the importance of sustainably changing their eating behaviours. They can then in turn influence their parents and the entire family to change their farming and eating habits.

CYBUS IN FABULA: « Ente Sacra Famiglia »

Project location: Schools, conference places in Italy

This project intends to bring about conditions conducive to the promotion of a culture based on good dietary behaviours via the consumption of fruits and vegetables. To this end, teenagers will be the guardians of a promotional campaign on healthy eating habits targeting both children and parents.

The long-term policy research on food education will start with a questionnaire designed by the teenagers and their teachers. The questionnaire will be submitted to children aged from 5 to 10 years old.

Also on the agenda are the creations of some fairy tales written by the teenagers for the children and of a website, using the project resources, to reach a wider audience: children, teenagers, teachers, educators, nutritionists, parents…

AMITIÉS CITÉ: “Cooking and gardening!”

Project location: Toulon (83) – France

Through this project the association seeks to promote healthy behaviours by increasing awareness, informing and acting for a balanced diet. Its objectives are to enable the children to know where the vegetables come from, their seasonality, to promote the regular consumption of vegetables by children, to make sure children understand the importance of vegetables in an healthy, balanced and varied diet.

To better discover the vegetables, cooking workshops will be organised for the children as well as some gardening activities. 30 children from the association will be able to follow their planting through frequent visits to the vegetable garden and hence get a better idea of the different seasons.

ASSOCIATION SOLIDARITÉ POUR LA VIES: “From the school garden to the school canteen of the rural public primary school of Kayalé in Togo”.

Project location: Ville de Kayalé – Préfecture d’Assoli – Togo

The project aims at increasing awareness among 200 rural children aged from 6 to 13 about the wide variety, benefits, production and preparation of vegetables, at improving school meals as well as at reducing the children absenteeism and drop-out rates during the pre-harvest period (March, April, May and June).

It will allow the children to learn the various vegetables, get the opportunity to familiar themselves with them, and learn how to grow them in their own garden. They will also learn how to prepare, cook them and eat them in their own canteen. Thanks to these actions, they will be in a position to increase their knowledge, be able to continue to improve their eating behaviours and hence avoid malnutrition, which usually suffer children from rural areas.