The Food Hub and Momentum are part of a major new EU project called Nourish EU to develop educational tools to assist the stimulation of Healthy & Creative Food Regions. Motivated by two closely-related challenges of obesity and food poverty, the project will work closely with the key players in food policy and food production to develop new approaches to ‘healthy, affordable and sustainable food” accessible to all.
Joining forces with organisations in UK, Bulgarian and Hungary, The Food Hub, Drumshanbo and local training and development specialists, Momentum will develop a toolkit to assist and train regional stakeholders to create a Healthy Food Regional Partnership. This toolkit will comprise a programme of learning actions and guidance on how to create a healthy food region.
Orla Casey of Momentum explains their involvement ‘Momentum is responsible for creating a new set of educational resources for Food SME Owners and Employees focused on creative ways to produce, market and distribute healthy food. The aim is to up skill food business owners and employees on how to implement greater innovation and creativity in their business through a free online course. We have so much to learn from a European context and are delighted to be involved. The biggest challenges facing the EU food sector are obesity and food poverty but these are also commercial opportunities to develop healthy and affordable foods’.
The third strand of the project and led by The Food Hub is to test an innovative industry based employability training module with a cohort of young unemployed. Fergal McPartland explains ‘we are particularly excited about the potential to produce outcomes relevant not only to education and training but also to youth – both as consumers (and a target group at risk of obesity and food poverty) but as future employees in the agri food sector.’
Funded by the European Union under their Erasmus+ programme, Momentum and the Food Hub are joined in this project by a forward thinking and well connected team. The project is lead by Craigavon Industrial Development Organisation in Northern Ireland and includes a number of other training organisations and specific agri-food industry companies including Canice Consulting (UK), Euro Perspectives Foundation (Bulgaria) and the Agricultural Vocational Centre of Central Hungary /VM KASZK (Hungary).
Those wishing to find out more about the project can do on www.nourisheu.com which will be launched in the New Year or by contacting Momentum on 071 9623500.
Pictured at the recent project launch held in CIDO, Craigavon, Northern Ireland.. from left to right
Ronan Duff, CIDO; Nikolett Biro, VM KASZK; Grace Lyons, Momentum; Vihra Andonova, Euro Perspectives Foundation; Canice Hamill, Canice Consulting; Orla Casey, Momentum; Fergal McPartland, The Food Hub, Brian Hunter, CIDO and Andras Doboczky, VM KASZK (seated).
