By Dražen Šimleša,, RIPESS EU General Coordinator
ZMAG began in May this year the project Food Wave – Empowering Urban Youth for Climate Change on public procurement tender by the city of Zagreb. Zagreb is part of 27 European partners consortium in the project that is financed through the EU program Development Education Awareness Raising (DEAR). The main goal of the project is to raise awareness and know-how, behavior skills and active approach for youth in the area of sustainable food policies connected to climate change actions. Through educational programs and practical training, ZMAG empowers young people between 15 and 35 years so that they can be active actors in their local communities and initiate sustainable and solidarity-based food-climate nexus projects. We have already done the Spring session of the training and are now in the middle of the new Autumn one. On our training there are lectures and presentations, practical workshops and small teams work, study visits and exhibitions. From the topics that were covered in the training, we can mention local-based solidarity agroecology partnerships and Community Supported Agriculture models, food waste and urban sustainable food systems, green public procurements and policies, ecological footprint and fair trade, social and solidarity economy as an integral part of the sustainable food system, etc. We have always connected as much as possible these topics with local actors in the field and participants also were regularly visiting ZMAG base, eco-social educational center for sustainable living and permaculture development Recycled Estate, 20km south from Zagreb.
As it was mentioned, we are now in the second session and running practical workshops on urban gardenings and mushrooms productions, climate action training, and on 13 November will be held the fifth conference “Our Good Food” at the Faculty of Agriculture in Zagreb.
