Food waste has received global attention as a major sustainability challenge, with significant implications for the economy, society and the environment. At the same time, it represents a global paradox: whilst a large amount of the food produced each year is wasted, there are huge numbers of people suffering from hunger. SavingFood offers a novel approach to tackle food waste by turning this environmental issue into an innovative solution to fight hunger. The project builds on the collaborative power of ICT networks and creates an online community of citizens, food waste stakeholders and policy makers that through knowledge creation and sharing they are empowered to take direct action and become part of the suggested food waste solution. Through the use of advanced open source tools connected to a social networking environment SavingFood facilitates the redistribution of surplus food to those in need, ensures that no food is wasted through lack of communication, supports the participation of people in organised as well as ad hoc events around food saving and encourages wide debate. Leveraging on the collaborative power of social networks and by activating the collective intelligence of citizens SavingFood seeks to create a social movement for tackling food waste and influence lifestyles towards a more sustainable future.

"<< Objectives >>ESSEL is the umbrella organisation for all voluntary organisations in Nicosia district. One of its main aims is to connect volunteers to various projects in the community, share information regarding volunteering activities and also support those in need through numerous support programs. The “Volunteering: A Way of Life” (VWL) project idea was raised through due to the conditions faced in real life. The current project will offer new knowledge, skills and experiences to volunteers, while the capacity of the organisations in which volunteers are based/offer their services will be increased. The main goal of the project is to run training workshops for young volunteers aged 15-35 years old with little experience in volunteering and ESC Programme. The participants will learn to plan, develop and manage volunteer projects under the European Solidarity Corps Programme, as well as to create a network between participants in order to implement joint volunteering projects in the future.<< Implementation >>The project is evolved around a set of workshops, while one of the activities will be a visit to volunteer organisations in Athens. The following workshops will be organised:* Workshop 1: Principles and values of Volunteering* Workshop 2: Volunteers’ Rights and Obligations* Workshop 3: The benefits of volunteering for people and society* Workshop 4: Volunteer work in a family setting* Workshop 5: Volunteer work in the Third Age and chronic patients* Workshop 6: Volunteer work with refugees, political asylum seekers, court appeals* Workshop 7: Volunteers in culture and environment* Workshop 8: Familiarity with voluntary organizations* Workshop 9: Volunteer ""Survival"" Guide* Workshop 10: Educational visit to Athens* Workshop 11: Closing workshop (summarizing outcomes and conclusions)150 young people and policy/decision makers will come together in order to exchange ideas, views and opinions on different aspects of voluntarism and its impact on local societies.<< Results >>Youth will develop a better understanding and more holistic perspective in terms of:* Direct influencing the quality of work provided by volunteers;* Receiving knowledge and competences in the field of the volunteering and European volunteering programme;* Learning new methods for working with volunteers;* Learning the roles of the voluntary projects;* Considering of how the received knowledge could deal with barriers, conflict and unpredictable situations in volunteering projects;* Providing a positive impact by increasing the capacity of the participants and the organisations in which they are voluteering;* Increasing prepared volunteers;* Creating new opportunities for inclusion in new volunteering projects and international projects;* Informing local communities about the impact of volunteering activities;* Ensuring the long-term international impact to the volunteers and organizations;* Increasing participants’ experience in their work with international volunteers."

<< Background >>Climate Change and rapid technological transformations are expected to affect our lives in an unprecedented way. Schools should be at the forefront of preparing the next generation for jobs that have not yet been created and for solving problems that have not yet been anticipated. To navigate through such uncertainty, students will need to develop curiosity, imagination, resilience, critical thinking and problem-solving skills as well as green skills. Therefore, it is essential for schools to move from the current facts driven educational model and endorse new practices for equipping students with the skills they need to become active and responsible citizens, capable to take action for climate and community at large.In this context, the FOOD RESCUE project introduces an innovative “applied learning” educational package that builds on food waste as a conceptual context for learning, in order to enable students to learn not just the facts, but develop problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. The project will develop the FOOD RESCUE curriculum by employing state-of-the-art student-centered pedagogical approaches, moving beyond the traditional methods of teaching that utilize primarily lecture-based methods. It will combine different pedagogical tools such as the maker’s education and the youth participation and activism pedagogies. The objective of the FOOD RESCUE curriculum is not to teach students what is right and wrong and what the consequences of food waste are, but to enable students to experience, reflect upon and engage in food waste reduction practices through which they use their experiences and reflections as a means to a deeper learning process leading to the development of 21st century skills. Overall, the curriculum will foster experiential and emotional learning on the topic of food waste and climate change and support the development of competences such as critical thinking, problem solving, emotional intelligence, social responsibility etc.<< Objectives >>1) Developing an innovative curriculum for primary education students with the aim to increase their awareness about food waste and enable them to develop transversal and green related skills. Research indicates that children learn more effectively when they are personally involved in the production of knowledge because different abilities (i.e. imaginative, cognitive) become more fully engaged. Therefore, FOOD RESCUE will adopt a constructivist approach and involve students in their knowledge formation by enabling them to orchestrate innovative solutions conductive to food waste reduction. 2) Developing a training program for educators to enable them apply the FOOD RESCUE curriculum while simultaneously further advancing their professional development in maker education and youth activism pedagogies. The project takes the viewpoint of educators to be trained in pioneering teaching methods that reach out to the creativity and social sensitivity of children. Evidence confirms that the needs of teachers are mainly linked to innovative teaching practices and hence the project will support them in order to enhance their teaching skills both in integrated disciplinarian content that cuts across curricula and in the transversal pedagogical delivery of this content.3) Promoting a culture of social mindfulness and responsibility regarding food waste. The earlier students are educated about environmental issues, the more sustainable their behaviors will become. Also, the more engaging the teaching tools used, the more long-lasting the educational results imprinted on students. On this basis, FOOD RESCUE offers a highly engaging curriculum for students that will influence their mindsets and behaviors towards food waste prevention at school, at home and within their communities.<< Implementation >>In terms of implementation, FOOD RESCUE includes multiple and varied activities related to: research/development of the FOOD RESCUE curriculum, teacher training activities, pilot testing of the curriculum in 5 countries, evaluation, dissemination and exploitation activities. During the 30 months of the FOOD RESCUE lifetime, more than 20 teachers will be directly trained through a face-to-face training seminar, more than 30 teachers will be trained through dedicated webinars and more than 300 will be reached through the FOOD RESCUE online course. Also, more than 400 students will participate in structured learning activities, designed in accordance to Maker Education and Youth Participation modules, and customised to the theme of food waste reduction and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Particularly, participating students will receive the “food rescue makers kits” and will be trained on how to utilise and combine technological components for building their self-devised solutions towards food waste and climate change. They will also be involved in the design and implementation of social activism activities such as making awareness campaigns, drafting petitions, volunteering campaigns, conducting cooking and distribution of meals for the community, etc.<< Results >>It is expected that FOOD RESCUE will have an impact on teachers by enriching their teaching toolkits with innovative teaching methods and enabling them to accomplish professional progress. Students will also benefit from the Maker Education materials and tools that develops designing and making competences, creative capacities and engineering imagination, useful for the 21st century. The Youth Participation toolkit will teach them the meaning and practice of social responsibility and active citizenship, contributing to building positive social attitudes and behaviours. In the long term, FOOD RESCUE shall contribute to the promotion of a culture of social mindfulness and responsibility, based on the assumptions that the earlier students are educated about the importance of environmental issues, the more sustainable their attitudes and behaviours become in terms of remedying and working against the negative impact of such issues.

NEMESIS designs, develops and tests an educational model for equipping students of primary and secondary education with Social Innovation Skills, values and tools. This process will enable students to become creative social thinkers, develop entrepreneurial mindsets, and become social change makers into a world where inequality, poverty and social exclusion are still quite evident. The NEMESIS model builds on a combination of innovative pedagogies and learning models, open technologies and participatory relations and processes. It also creates bridges between the learning communities and real world social innovation experiences by creating a European wide community of social innovation practitioners eager to interact with students, facilitating interdisciplinary and intergenerational learning. To foster its potential to scale and be adopted by educational institutions around Europe, the project develops a Social Innovation Open Learning Platform to grant access to the specific educational model and resources to all with emphasis on those from disadvantaged environments. This platform also facilitates the creation of a Community of Practice of teachers, school leaders and relevant stakeholders willing to break silos, engage in dialogue, drive organizational change and experience the value of the NEMESIS educational model. NEMESIS will be piloted in Greece, Spain, UK, France and Portugal engaging stakeholders into co-creation of educational resources, collective learning through the development of projects and digital storytelling as well as into online learning and knowledge sharing communities of peers. In that way, the project builds a contemporary educational model that will act as a catalyst in innovative skills based education in Europe that is expected to improve current teaching and learning practices and drive students’ passion for sustainable social change.

CULTIVATE uses a multi-actor approach to build sustainability and resilience in urban and peri-urban areas through a ground-breaking online social innovation support platform – The Food Sharing Compass. Built with and for five key stakeholder groups – food sharing initiatives, policy makers, food supply actors, researchers and citizens – the platform will make it possible to navigate diverse food sharing landscapes and cultures, in order to understand, develop, replicate, expand and strengthen sustainable food sharing in Europe, supporting the European Green Deal’s Action Plan, Food 2030, the Farm to Fork Strategy and the EU’s climate change ambitions. The open access Food Sharing Compass will comprise five innovative tools: The SHARECITY200 Database, an interactive automated mapping, tracking and monitoring database of food sharing initiatives that will add more than 100 new locations to the SHARECITY100 Database [https://sharecity.ie/research/sharecity100-database/]; The Food Sharing Calculator, which enables comprehensive and holistic assessment of the costs, benefits and impacts of food sharing for all stakeholders; The Menu of Good Governance, which provides options for developing policy making which facilitates sustainable food sharing; The Library of Citizen Engagement, which supports establishing, expanding and maintaining inclusive participation in sustainable food sharing; The sustainable food sharing Community of Practice, which will be established through a bespoke Amplification Programme to optimise the potential for mutual learning and exploitation of the Food Sharing Compass well beyond the project. In essence, CULTIVATE will establish the EU as the global frontrunner in the development of resilient and inclusive food sharing economies, identifying drivers and implementation gaps and challenging existing theories and practices which currently constrain sustainable food sharing.