Food provision and security pose an immense challenge for urban sustainability, circular economies, and inclusion. While initiatives exist to enhance citizen education on sustainable food consumption, food waste disposal, recycling, and reusing, there exists a gap in the training of youth regarding the entrepreneurial skills required for Alternative Food Networks (AFNs).
AFNs are, essentially, informal networks of food provisioning and redistribution, especially among local and vulnerable groups, such as immigrants and migrants. Thus, AFNs can help achieve social inclusion and food security by providing food access, jobs, and resources to underprivileged groups.
The Erasmus+ KA2 project ‘entreYOUTH’ aims to address the lack of technical knowledge and experience among young people (aged 18-30 years old), including those who are part of vulnerable groups, by providing training on AFNs, sustainability, and circular economy practices, and education on entrepreneurial skills to engage in social enterprising.
To fully achieve the above objective, entreYOUTH will provide an in-depth blended toolkit for youth workers on sustainable and circular urban food enterprising. The toolkit will provide guidance to youth workers on how to adopt innovative (and behavioural) training techniques that would inspire youth to develop empowerment and self-motivation competences for engaging in entrepreneurship.
Finally, entreYOUTH will facilitate YOUTHPASS certification for youth participants, and EntreComp and DigComp certifications for participating youth workers.