For our project Food for the Future, collaboration with citizens/consumers is vital: for raising awareness, discovering taste preferences, gaining insight into their perceptions and behaviour, etc. Young people are a key component for our project’s success.
This is why we aim to involve youth as much as possible in the process to come up with new ideas and solutions.
We’re focussing on two groups of youth
Secondary school pupils (10-18 years): The development of new and original educational module allows teachers to work on topics such as ‘what will we be eating in the future?’ This module is an addition to the already existing framework about sustainable nourishment.
The module will be pitched at the end of 2016, early 2017 in several schools, during the Science Week at the University of Leuven, the ‘Heilig Hart’ school of Heverlee (4th grade) and the VKO school in Opwijk (1st and 2nd grade). Starting 2017-2018, teachers can implement this on a regular basis.
In addition we would like to collaborate with school caterers by adding more ‘food of the future’ on the menus of the school cafeterias.
Young entrepreneurs (18+): They’ll be collaborating with Colruyt Group on product innovation. Which new products will hit the shelves in 2018? How will these new products be marketed towards consumers? For example, pulses: can we transform and market them as a sandwich spread, pasta or as a snack?
Secondly students of the University College Leuven-Limburg will aim to present the story of Food of the Future in a receptive way to the target audiences. Based on which parameters do we shift our product development? How do you bring this story to people in an attractive way? And how can you convince people to change their habits and try new culinary products?
These are the kind of questions and challenges youth will be tackling the following years.
