Sustainable Food

The lunchtime school canteen is a transformative educational space where pupils learn about the food model, and a clear example of this is the Healthier and More Sustainable School Canteens (MEMSS) programme, an innovative initiative launched three years ago with ambitious aims: to encourage children to choose a healthier, more sustainable diet, at the same time promoting the local economy and tackling the climate emergency by focusing on local and seasonal produce.

The programme, promoted by Barcelona City Council, the Barcelona Education Consortium and the Barcelona Public Health Agency, has progressively attracted more and more schools. So far this year there are 29 participating schools, seven of which have only recently joined.

Work on introducing improvements to the programme continues, based on the learnings and experience gained in the first few years. This is why those participating in the programme were invited to an internal working day at the Sant Agustí civic centre last Wednesday 6 March. A total of twenty-six people took part, including representatives from both primary and secondary schools, and professionals from the administrations coordinating the project.

Participants took stock of the progress made to date, sharing experiences and good practice, identifying shared needs and focusing on the key collective challenges to be addressed, in particular strengthening networking, increasing the number of participating schools and ensuring greater involvement of all stakeholders (families, monitoring and kitchen staff, teaching staff, etc.).

A community, moving forward together

Over the course of the day, different proposals for improvement were gathered from those participating. One of the most noteworthy was a desire to work more closely together, and in a more coordinated way. Thus, under the provisional name of “Comunitat MEMSS”, several proposals emerged for lines of work aimed at reaching beyond the walls of each centre, sharing resources and working collectively in order to improve.

A need to establish agile, effective channels of communication between centres so that good practice, ideas and resources can be shared was identified, together with a need to encourage external communication of the project via social networks, with a view to reaching both families and the general public in a clearer more direct way.

Debate and exchange of experiences

The day was also devoted to discussing the topics previously chosen: the inclusion of vegetable protein on menus, getting pupils’ families more engaged with the project’s values, and the relationship with farmers and local producers. These are areas that are already being worked on, but still need to be further developed. The centres shared the difficulties and challenges each was facing, and proposals to be promoted by the MEMSS were put forward.

For example, among the proposals to encourage families to get involved in a more experiential and participatory way, there was talk of organising culinary workshops as a way of sharing recipes and tangible strategies, and above all as a way of moving towards a healthier and more sustainable diet, and achieving deep rooted cross-cutting change. Moreover, it was also felt that more importance should be attributed to the educational value of monitoring, and to promoting training and the exchange of experiences between kitchen staff, who ultimately are the ones responsible for preparing the dishes the children eat.

Meetings such as this one serve to reflect on and to improve the work being carried out at each centre, above all providing a space for coming together and seeing that the journey along the path towards a healthier and more sustainable diet is a journey that is shared. MEMSS still has training, materials and resources to offer for the current academic year, and over the course of the next, work will continue, taking a more in-depth look at everything that came up in discussions at the event, at the same time encouraging more schools to join.

All schools interested in taking part, or in receiving more information about the programme can write to menjadorsescolars@aspb.cat.