Module 8: Turning Toward Sustainability

Students already knew that sdopting healthy and sustainable diets go hand in hand with social, economical and environmental sustainability, so sustainable food systems lie at the hearth of SDGs. 

Thus, we started with the definition of term "Sustainability" by putting more emphasis on its relationship with food and environment, by watching a video published in YouTube so as to comprehend what Sustainable development means.

URL of video used: 

https://youtu.be/jfsWI8XgQyo

Just to remember 17 Sustainable Development Goals, students were called to have a look at a pdf published by FAO 

 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/2205FAO%20and%20the%2017%20SDGs.pdf

Then we told to our students that in the light of the activities we have implemented in our project, we have already known the fact that food systems are not a separated unit, as they have relationship with many other systems. 

We told them that we understand that still there was a need to make a deep analysis on 3 questions that will be the main engagement of this module:

• What is a Sustainable Food System? 

• Is this system possible? 

• If yes, how will we achieve to transfer it to our daily life? 

A first definition was given:

"A sustainable food system (SFS) is a food system that provides food security and nutrition for all in a manner that does not compromise the economic, social, and environmental bases for producing food security and nutrition for future generations."

Then a discussion was held so as to understand that a sustainable food system:

- is consistently profitable (economic sustainability);  

- has broad benefits to society (social sustainability); 

- has a positive or neutral impact on the natural environment (environmental sustainability)

and students were called to give their opinions on a forum, based to the following statement and questions:

"To achieve Sustainability, the global food system needs to be reshaped to be more productive, more inclusive of poor and marginalized people, environmentally sustainable and provide healthy and nutrious diets. These are complex and systemic challenges that require a combination of interrelated actions at the local, national, regional, and global levels."

• Can you share your opinions/ contributions/ modifications to the problem you see in current food system at local, national, or global levels, give the reason of problem and tell your opinion to change this problem?

Economic, social and environmental dimensions of food system were discussed and analyzed. After all these were analyzed, we eplained students that in order to illustrate, any proposed action to solve a problem (e.g., animal disease) or take advantage of a new opportunity

(e.g., a new environmentally friendly technology or profitable market) must be evaluated against all other dimensions of sustainability to ensure that there are no undesirable impacts. This is resulted from the idea of holistic approach in sustainable food systems in which one area affects the other one like domino effect. 

 

Then we asked students to follow a  genially presentation and take part to a puzzle quiz related to all those that were analyzed.

 

Genial.ly 

https://view.genial.ly/61f6406bb021450012af02c9/interactive-content-puzzle-quiz-module-8

We encouraged students to think holistically by touching the dimensions of sustainable food systems and SDGs, so as to design a campaign in their local community. 

Some examples were given, as follows:

- a cooking workshop with their parents by preparing zero waste recipes;

- an exhibition in their school with posters, infographics, comics about related issues;

- Qr codes with zero waste recipes that could be hung to different places in their community;

- lectures or activities with little students close to their town. 

We explained those that these are only some examples but also encouraged them to develop more as to their creativity as individually or as a group.

We pointed out that the important is their willing to take action!

As soon as their campaign was ready students were encouraged to add the details of their campaign (where it was organized, target group, etc), the materials they had created, some pictures or/and videos to a padlet.