Funded Projects
During the year, Slow Food works to acquire funds from public and private institutions (international organizations, foundations, multilateral donors) for the implementation of projects that contribute to strengthening the network and achieving the strategic objectives of the movement at the global level.
The activities are divided into three main areas, which are linked to each other:
- identification of possible calls for proposals,
- planning of the activities to be carried out and presentation of proposals
- management of the funds acquired.
Below you will find the funded projects that Slow Food is actively working on.
Operating Grant
NGO Operating grants for 2011 – 2012 – 2013 – 2014 – 2015 – 2016 – 2017 -2018 – 2019 – 2020 – 2021 under the Programme for the Environment and Climate Action (LIFE)
The Operating grant is a co-financing instrument that covers the costs that European environmental NGOs, such as Slow Food, have to bear in carrying out the activities provided for in their annual work programme in relation to EU countries.
SUSTavianFEED – Alternative animal feeds in Mediterranean poultry breeds to obtain sustainable products.
End Date: March 2025
Donor: PRIMA Programme supported by the European Union
Partners: ALIA – Sociedad Agraria de Transformacion (Spain) – UMU – University of Murcia (Spain) – UNITO – University of Turin (Italy) – ISA-CM – Institut Superieur Agronomique de Chott Mariem (Tunisia) – Rayhana Ngo (Tunisia) – Entomo Consulting S.L. (Spain) – EGE University (Turkey) – Fondazione Slow Food per la Biodiversità Onlus (Italy)
SUSTAvianFEED aims to demonstrate the efficacy of innovative poultry farming systems and the social effects in rural Mediterranean areas, with a specific focus on gender equality.
FoodTrails
End Date: 15/10/2024
Donor: UE H2020
Partners Italia, Belgium, Norway, UK, Netherlands, Denmark, France, Portugal, Greece, Albania, Poland
FOODTRAILS, a four-year project led by the City of Milan, brings together a Consortium of 19 partners (including 11 EU cities, 3 universities and 5 prominent food system stakeholders), which will be followed by another 21 worldwide cities, to translate the Mlan Urban Food Policy Pact shared vision and collective commitment to integrated urban food policies into measurable and long-term progress towards sustainable food systems. Building on the momentum created by the recent emergence of cities as key sites to reimagine, enact and engage with food system transformation.
PPILOW – Poultry and Pig Low-input and Organic production systems’ Welfare
End Date: August 2024
Donor: European Union – DG Research
The project aims to work on animal welfare and to co-construct, through a multi-actor approach, solutions to improve the welfare of poultry and pigs reared in organic and low-input outdoor production systems.
Youth & Food – food as a vehicle for inclusion
End date: 2024
Partners: Al Kharub cooperativa sociale, Associazione Multietnica dei mediatori interculturali, C.P.I.A. Agrigento, Centro Studi di Politica Internazionale CeSPI, Comune di Torino, Coop.Meeting Service Catering, Sanitaria Delfino Società Cooperativa Sociale, Servizio VIII – Centro per l’Impiego di Agrigento.
The project aims to promote the inclusive growth of 60 young migrants, aged between 17 and 21 years, in Piedmont and Sicily through the activation of paths to promote food as a vehicle for integration, economic growth, employment and social development. On the one hand, the aim is to create favorable conditions for social and work integration through the activation of training courses in companies and the financing of 3 entrepreneurial projects; specific training for gastronomic mediators will create further opportunities for integration. On the other hand, work will be done to strengthen the critical understanding of the migration process and will favor the creation of social networks, activating their own networks and involving the citizenship in gastronomic events and culinary workshops; the process will be favored by participating in the debate on the subject with the organization of conferences and the creation of tools for awareness raising .
EU Food Policy Coalition
End Date: 31/12/2023
Donor: Porticus
Slow Food is part of the EU Food Policy Coalition, as well as member of the Coalition Board and hosting organisation of the Coalition Secretariat since its inception, in 2019. Participants in the EU Food Policy Coalition work towards policy integration and alignment at the EU-level to facilitate the transition to sustainable food systems. The Coalition provides the debating space to discuss policies and, sometimes, carry out joint activities. Porticus is supporting the work of the Coalition in 2022 and 2023.
NIYAT
End date: 2023
Donor:European Union
Partners: Fundación Gran Chaco in coordination with the Rural Communities Network (RCR), the Rural Women’s Cooperative (COMAR), the gender area of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) and Slow Food
The name “Niyat” refers to the Wichí name of the traditional leader who represents a guide and bases his leadership on the knowledge and ability to guide the group in the face of the risks and difficulties they must face.
The Niyat project aims to strengthen women in order to generate a new indigenous governance for the co-design of public policies based on rights in the rural areas of the Gran Chaco of Argentina. The objective is to promote indigenous leadership by promoting a process of inter-institutional articulation to consolidate the communities as a local subject protagonist of the interventions in their territory, in dialogue with the State.
Slow Plate: Knowledge of and Access to Healthy School Meals
End Date: March 2024
Donor: World Diabetes Foundation
Partners: The South African Food Communities Trust (SAFCT)
The project is based on an integrated approach combining activities aimed at creating an enabling environment for healthy food choices in schools. This approach to healthy eating can provide children and adolescents with both the opportunity to learn food and nutrition skills and how best to implement them both within and outside the school setting.
Foster community-led initiatives in East Africa by enhancing agroecological productions and market access in response to the global crisis
End Date: 30 March 2023
Donor: Agroecology Fund
Partners: Slow food Uganda, Slow Food Convivia Association of Kenya, Women Development for Science and Technology (WODSTA), Programme Intégré pour le Développement du Peuple Pygmée (PIDP)
While the previous project, funded by AEF, focused on strengthening farmers’ agroecological knowledge (Food Academies) and applying these agroecological theories in the field (Food Gardens), this new collaborative aims to enhance market opportunities (Earth Markets and Cooks Alliance), strengthening food value chains (Presidia) and raise awareness of the importance of choosing these cultural agroecological healthy foods.
The project strategy relies on the Slow Food methodologies: Presidia, Earth Markets and the Cooks Alliance whose reference framework is agroecology, whilst allowing for the adaption to the individual needs of each farming community, with the intention to improve their livelihoods. The collaborative will concentrate on practice by supporting farmers in promoting their agroecological products at markets and sensitizing consumers on the benefits of these products. Subsequently, we will continue to work on advocacy locally and globally for long-term change. Slow Food international will lead the collaborative as an umbrella organization, ensuring coordination, sound knowledge-sharing practices and advancing the role of its African partners on the global stage. Slow Food Kenya and Slow Food Uganda will strengthen their mentoring action towards WODSTA and PIDP respectively. The targeted countries are: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and DRC.
Nakuru, Kenya: valuing locally sourced seeds and their resilience
End Date: June 2022
Donor: CARIPLO Foundation, Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation
Partners: University of Pavia
The pandemic linked to Covid19 has highlighted even more the need to ensure local communities food security and sovereignty. The project starts from the assumption that improving the techniques of care and conservation of the input needed for food production, namely seeds, will help solve the challenge of “Crop Biodiversity” in Kenya. Ensuring seed sovereignty means strengthening the resilience of local communities as well as promoting biodiversity conservation and traditional knowledge. By promoting sustainable agriculture that relies on local varieties and crops resilient to climate change, the project also aims to raise awareness about the positive impact on the health of individuals and the community, trying to counteract the current dynamics of market supply and demand that continue to give very little attention to agroecological products.
Increasing the resilience of mountain communities and support sustainable production practices by enhancing agro value chains
Agroecology and Alternative Food Systems in Kenya and Uganda
End Date: December 2022
Donor: Biovision
The proposed project intends to improve the livelihoods of local farming communities in Kenya and Uganda by further promoting the transition towards agroecological food systems. The project will focus on:
- investing in partnerships within agroecology networks by developing linkages and synergies with other projects and organizations (exploratory project phase)
- strengthening the Slow Food on-going projects (food gardens, Presidia, Earth Markets) for their use as successful show cases for agroecological approaches
- sensitizing consumers on the benefits of agroecological products
- strengthening presence in local policy platforms that affect agroecology
The project will be greatly looking at improving agroecology by building alliances and sharing grassroots evidence base in Uganda and Kenya targeting the local, national and global agroecological partners.
FOOD HEROES: Our compass for a future of solidarity
End Date: June 2022
Donor: European Cultural Foundation, in collaboration with Fondazione CRC
The project aims to encourage and celebrate the virtuous initiatives in the food world that are reacting to the Covid-19 emergency with ideas that may inspire others. A European campaign will be designed using the stories, comprising a digital catalogue, physical exhibitions and a social media campaign. At least one exhibition will be organized during the project lifetime and the circulation of the format will be spread throughout Europe thanks to Slow Food network. A version of the digital catalogue for schoolchildren will be realized and spread.
MEDSNAIL: Sustainable Networks for Agro-food Innovation Leading in the Mediterranean
End Date: August 2022
Donor: European Union – ENI CBC MED Programme
MedSNAIL intends to tackle these issues by fostering the valorisation and development of small-scale traditional agro-food value chains, combining enhancement of market potentialities and socio-environmental sustainability. Project activities will build on the well-established experience, principles and methods of Slow Food, an international grassroots organization promoting traditional food with a strong focus on biodiversity preservation.
Foodnected
End Date: October 2022
Donor: MAVA, Fondation pour la Nature
With the support of the MAVA Foundation, the organisations Slow Food, Global Footprint Network, Low Impact Fishers of Europe (LIFE) and GOB Menorca have launched a new project aimed at reducing the “distance” between producers and consumers, as well as informing both groups about the implications for the planet of the way they produce and consume food. The project seeks to create an overarching Community of Practice (CoP) involving a diverse and comprehensive set of stakeholders (and their networks) in short value chains to generate and share experiences and best practices, to seek workable solutions to their common challenges, and to build synergies that facilitate the transition towards fair and sustainable food systems with a low Ecological Footprint, starting in the Mediterranean region.
CINE – Cinema communities for Innovation, Networks and Environment
End date: 31 October 2022
Donor: European Union – DG Connect
The project aims to promote film in communities where cinemas don’t exist or are disappearing, focusing on their ability to serve as venues for cultural and social aggregation, while sowing the seeds of environmental and food culture among younger generations. Find out more
Memorandum of Understanding
Mediterranean Network of Forests Model
The Model Forest concept is based on an innovative approach that combines the social, cultural and economic needs of local communities with the long-term sustainability of forest landscapes. The International Model Forest Network (IFMN) is a voluntary association of partners (public forest services, civil society organizations and others) from around the world working towards a common goal, which is the sustainable management and use of forests and forest landscapes. The concept of Forest Model is largely part of the work program of the FAO Forestry Department, considering also the objectives of the “Legally non-binding instrument on all types of forests” that emerged from the United Nations Forum on Forests and was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on October 22, 2007. The partners of the RMFM agree on a common analysis of strategic problems and a shared vision of the future. They agree on the objective of establishing a network of territories that share the common goal of developing the concept of Model Forests in the Mediterranean environment, which will be part of the International Network of Model Forests. The objective of the Network is therefore to test the concept of Model Forests, and its application principles, in the Mediterranean area.