Rikolto (Vredeseilanden/VECO) argues for sustainable family-based agriculture, sustainable food and honest trade in the South as well as in the North. Local solutions contribute to a global and collective challenge and coherent solutions must be considered for all parties. In the past few years, Vredeseilanden has already worked with Colruyt Group on various chain projects (rice, bananas, passion fruit, etc.). This project is a new step in which we experiment with new forms of cooperation between different parties through co-creation.
Since as early as 2002, Colruyt Group has been investing in small-scale training and education programmes for young people through the Collibri Foundation in developmental regions where we buy our products. The training projects always go hand in hand with the formation of a sustainable production chain. Young people are given a professional education so they can successfully expand their future in agriculture or related sectors. Thus, training supports chain projects and the development of new Boni Selection products and vice versa: a new training project is also linked to a new chain. The result: the local community is reinforcing itself in both social and economic respects. Moreover, the training of young people is directly linked to our core activity as a retailer.
At UCLL we immediately knew we wanted to participate in this project: reaching out to young people with a message of sustainable and healthy food, fits in perfectly with our expertise and ambition in the domains of both marketing communication and dietetics. Our students will be actively engaged in developing new ideas on how to market sustainable and healthy food, which also ties in nicely with our focus on sustainable business practices. In doing so, this will enable our students to help give rise to the ‘food of the future’.
The Province of Flemish Brabant is one of the main knowledge economy regions in Europe. In the field of food, the region is aglobal frontrunners. The unique combination of high-end research, applied research and industrial application leads to constant innovation in terms of the production, processing and logistics of food. By unifying various actors in co-creative partnerships and, as such, transcending the traditional frameworks, the Province of Flemish Brabant wishes to answer the global challenge of feeding a growing global population in a sustainable way.
With our Sustainable Food Economies Research Group (SFERE), we aim to gain insight into European and global food issues. We will look for new forms of cooperation between public and private actors in order to contribute to the public debate and work on a more sustainable world together. This project is a unique opportunity to document a marketing process from the start; it is a way of researching cooperation and to actively work as an actor of change.
