Opportunity : Virtual knowledge exchange for Indigenous Peoples in Asia and Pacific

This is an initiative for indigenous friends and members of Slow Food in Asia and Oceania. My name is Dai Kitabayashi, a youth of Loochoos (Ryukyus) peoples in Okinawa, Japan, I am also a member of the Advisory Board of Slow Food Indigenous Peoples’ network. Jointly with Slow Food Nippon and headquarters office, we would like to invite you to an interesting initiative for mutual learning and exchanges, created for and by indigenous peoples in Asia and Oceania:

Slow Food Indigenous Peoples Asia and Oceania Online Workshop.

Participating to several exchanges and events, such as Terra Madre and Indigenous Terra Madre, give us the possibility to learn and get inspired by other communities who are putting in place innovative projects to deal with challenges similar to ours. In our movement, there are several indigenous entrepreneurs that are making the difference in their communities, contributing to a good, clean, and fair future for all, including the generations that will come after us.

Due to Covid-19 pandemic, we can’t meet as often as we would like, thus, we created an Online Workshop as a safe environment, respectful of our cultures and identities, to share our stories and learn from each other. The sessions started in May and will go till September. We have learnt from the experiences of Slow Food Communities of Amis people in Taiwan, Pasil Slow Food Community in Philippines and a chef from Slow Food Ryukyu. The next session, on July 26^th, the story of a youth leader of Akha people in Thailand will be shared and we will learn how he supports and empowers the community through his projects. If you are interested in joining, please feel free to contact us through the form.

The schedule is, from 4 to 6pm Japan Time:

• July 26th by Lee Ayu Chuepa (Akha/Thailand)
• August 9th To be confirmed
• August 23rd by Yani Aryanto (Dompuness/Indonesia)
• September 6th Teruyo Usa (Ainu/Japan)
• September 13 (16:00-18:00 JST) – Final Summary Session

These experiences will be archived as online textbooks for more indigenous youths, as learning materials to get inspirations or tips when they start new projects to preserve their food cultures and empower their communities.

As we have great learnings together, it might be great opportunities for your friends as well, so we created this one-pager website to invite more indigenous peoples around us. Please, refer to the following link and invite your friends too: https://peraichi.com/landing_pages/view/ffrjx

As indigenous youths, accessing resources to develop our projects is more challenging than what it is for our non-indigenous peers. But we have the great opportunity of being connected within this network and the will to meet and exchange experiences with other indigenous youth.

We hope you would like to take this chance and join us in this wonderful “online field trip” by indigenous youth,

Tandiga tandi, thank you.
Dai