Partners
The Food for Us project would not be able to happen without funding through the 10YFP Trust Fund established by the United Nations’ Environment Programme (UNEP). The mission of the Sustainable Lifestyles and Education (SLE) programme is to foster the uptake of sustainable lifestyles as the common norm, with the objective of ensuring their positive contribution to addressing global challenges, such as resource efficiency and biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and adaptation, poverty eradication and social well-being. Find out more here.
Part of the function of the application and the research is to identify and measure the reduced environmental impact associated with the food bought and sold through the app. Carbon Calculated will be analysing the data captured by the app to determine the carbon and water savings, cost and volumes of food traded, distances travelled and many other indicators. Find out more about Carbon Calculated here.
One of the key areas of this project is to learn from and build the capacity of South African researchers in the field of sustainable food systems, and food waste research. As an environmental organisation that campaigns to end food waste, and having undertaken extensive research on on-farm food waste in developing countries, Feedback bring a depth of understanding from which our project team can learn. Find out more about Feedback here.
Drawing on many years of working with and researching food value chains, and food loss and waste in these supply chains, Pinpoint Sustainability oversees the management of the project, liaising with the project team, 10YFP and interested stakeholders. As an official partner of UNEP’s 10YFP Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) Programme, Pinpoint ensures alignment of this project with the SFS Programme. Find out more about Pinpoint here.
Food for Us is led and administered by the ELRC, a vibrant and diverse community of scholars and environmental education practitioners, which forms a regional hub of environmental learning innovation. Within this project they guide the social learning research component of the project. Three researchers (including a post-doc and a Masters) are drawing on the findings of this project to inform transformative learning methodology, and understanding the role of mobile phone applications in transferring knowledge through a learning network. Find out more about the ELRC here.
CSV is committed to working with clients and partners to develop strategy and practices that create economic value while simultaneously enhancing social and environmental benefits. It is this expertise that is being drawn on to oversee the trial and development of the application over the period of the project. Find out more about CSV here.
This project would not be what it is without Lead Associates, who are our app developers. LEAD Associates are committed to working on projects that have, as their core, effective and sustainable environmental benefits. Through upscaling existing projects by engaging relevant, enabled partners, projects can start addressing the enormity of the challenges faced by all ecosystems. LEAD endeavours to provide a responsive platform for existing and new networks to leverage restorative activities. As such, LEAD will draw on their expertise and passion to develop and adapt the app as we learn from our users.
The Sustainability Institute (SI) is an international living and learning centre providing learning experiences in ecology, community and spirit. They have a partnership with the University of Stellenbosch, and offer post-graduate programmes in sustainable development. The SI brings with them an understanding and experience in sustainable food systems research, and are undertaking trial research in the Western Cape region. Find out more about the Sustainability Institute here.