Public catering plays an important role in modern public food service provision and thus contributes to every-day well-being of a very large number of citizens. The central concern of public catering has traditionally been nutritional; recently, new emphasis has been placed on environmental, local economy and sensory aspects of the public meal. In many European countries there is a considerable public attention on public providing of daily meals and increasing demand on public organic food procurement especially for youth. There are many reasons, why the integration of organic food become a great importance since last years. Relations between organic food supply, missing knowledge about origin and sources of food, eating habits and health problems (obesity and overweight problems) among young generations are becoming more and more obvious and have caught public attention. Public catering holds the potential to become a promising sales channel for organic foods. Processing of regional organic food in public catering service is an important factor to enhance regional supply chains, regional family farm production (2014 – UN-International Year of Familiy Farming) and helps developing organic markets on local regional and national level and thus contributing to sustainable development of rural areas. The project will face these backgrounds with aim to contribute to sustainable and healthy nutrition in public catering facilities through the development of new and innovative ways of teaching and learning about “organic cooking in public settings” and through advanced awareness about these topics. The partner consortium consists of 6 partners from 5 European countries. The consortium covers a broader spectrum of partners active in different sectors: University of South Bohemia - Faculty of Agriculture (CZ) as a research and educational institution dealing with topics of sustainable agriculture, alternative systems of farming; Vestyjland Folk High School (DK) skilled in providing courses to organic cooking and farming and running organic canteen and organic garden; AIAB Liguria (IT) - association bringing together farmers, practitioners, experts, researchers and consumers intensivelly cooperating with 18 AIAB-offices acting in different regions of Italy; Thuringian Consumer Advice Center - Network Unit for School Catering (DE) with rich experiences in advising and cooperation with public cantees; Center of Environmental Activities (SK) – non-profit organisation experienced in cooperation projects with school canteens - implementation of organic food in the school canteens and in environmental education; project coordinator Thüringer Ökoherz (DE) promoting sustainable ways of living and the advancement of ecological agriculture in Thuringia and Germany, experienced in coordination and participation in several European projects. Following project activities will take place in order to reach planned results and impacts by the project: - Development of curriculum for complementary qualification of organic cooks in public settings based on ECVET-standards in order to enable exchange of experiences, practices, and supporting mobility in European context. - Development of interactive ICT-tool for sustainable cooking with organic and regional products in public kitchens providing knowledge and proposing actions to organic seasonal and regional cooking (preparation of sustainable menus) - Development of Handbook with most important basic information to topics regarding the organic cooking in public settings. The handbook will provide assistance for public kitchens on the way of conversion to more sustainable ways of cooking. - Realisation of pilot course on organic cooking in public settings for pilot testing of project results (ECVET-Curriculum, IT-tool) - Awareness raising about healthy and sustainable nutrition and importance of integration of organic food into daily meals in public settings through multiplier events and different dissemination channels (EU dissemination platform, PR material, social networks, IT-tool web-page, media outputs, project presentation in different events). - Establishment of national Competence Centres to ensure transfer of project results and support their users and to improve the networking between partners in organic cooking sector also after the project. CCs will provide advising and guidance in changing-over towards more sustainable ways of cooking in public settings. - Initiating the European Network for Organic Cooking in Public Settings: The network of partners (e.g. of vocational schools for cooking, HoReCa-facilities, public catering services, other relevant organisations and institutions etc.) will be initiated on national level. Via national CCs cooperation, communication and exchange between all stakeholders involved in order to enhance sustainable cooking in public settings and support the process of conversion on European level will be ensured.
Public catering plays an important role in modern public food service provision and thus contributes to every-day well-being of a very large number of citizens. The central concern of public catering has traditionally been nutritional; recently, new emphasis has been placed on environmental, local economy and sensory aspects of the public meal. In many European countries there is a considerable public attention on public providing of daily meals and increasing demand on public organic food procurement especially for youth. There are many reasons, why the integration of organic food become a great importance since last years. Processing of regional organic food in public catering service is an important factor to enhance regional supply chains, and helps developing organic markets on local regional and national level and thus contributing to sustainable development of rural areas. The overall aim of the project is to contribute to sustainable and healthy nutrition in public catering facilities through bringing more sustainable way of using resources into public serving outlets through the development of new and innovative ways of teaching and learning about “organic cooking in public settings”. Specific objectives of the project were to develop a. an ECVET-based curriculum for training of “organic cooks” esp. for public catering settings, b. an interactive IT-tool to organic cooking in public kitchens and c. a Handbook dealing with introducing organic and local food in public settings. The partner consortium consists of 6 partners from 5 countries. The consortium covered a broader spectrum of partners active in different sectors: University of South Bohemia - Faculty of Agriculture (CZ) as a research and educational institution dealing with topics of sustainable agriculture, alternative systems of farming; Vestyjland Folk High School (DK) skilled in providing courses to organic cooking and farming and running organic canteen and organic garden; AIAB Liguria (IT) - association bringing together farmers, practitioners, experts, researchers and consumers intensivelly cooperating with 18 AIAB-offices acting in different regions of Italy; Thuringian Consumer Advice Center - Network Unit for School Catering (DE) with rich experiences in advising and cooperation with public cantees; Center of Environmental Activities (SK) – non-profit organisation experienced in cooperation projects with school canteens - implementation of organic food in the school canteens and in environmental education; project coordinator Thüringer Ökoherz (DE) promoting sustainable ways of living and the advancement of ecological agriculture in Thuringia and Germany, experienced in coordination and participation in several European projects. Following main project activities have been realised in order to reach planned results and impacts by the project: - Development of the cook.org curriculum - an innovative educational material for complementary qualification of organic cooks in public settings based on ECVET-standards. The training of “Organic cooks in Public Settings” intends to enlarge and deepen the classical training with focus on using organic food and running a kitchen in a sustainable way. - Development of the web-based cook.org IT-tool with integrated RecipeApp, supporting the integration of sustainable cooking with organic and regional products into daily meals in public kitchens. It provides knowledge and proposes concrete actions and recipes for practicing of organic, seasonal and regional cooking evaluating the sustainability of planned menus. - Development of Handbook “Greening public canteens”, introducing most important basic information regarding the integration of organic, regional and seasonal cooking in public kitchens. The handbook provides assistance for public kitchens in a conversion process. One of the main objectives of the handbook is to convey the knowledge and experience about how public canteens can find the way to sustainability, especially by using more organic, regional and seasonal products in their daily practice. All mentioned project outputs are free available in 6 European languages. - Realisation of the pilot course in order to test applicability and the quality of developed outputs as well as to establish an exchange between the project partners and representatives of the target groups. - Realisation of events for multipliers in all partner countries aimed on different target groups to promote project results as well as to initiate the cooperation and possibilities for future implementation of project results into educational as well as cooking practice. - Awareness raising about sustainable nutrition and importance of integration of organic food into daily meals in public settings through multiplier events and different dissemination channels. In all participating countries, the project results are in use or in the process of further development respectively integration into existing systems.