The SLOWMED team has the pleasure to present and thank the Food Heritage Foundation (FHF), as its associate partner.
The Food Heritage Foundation (FHF) is a Lebanese non-profit organization that aims to preserve, document and promote Lebanon’s traditional food heritage as a main driver of rural economic development. Affiliated to the Environment and Sustainable Development Unit (ESDU) at the American University of Beirut (AUB), FHF programs revolve around raising consumers’ awareness and demand for local healthy cuisine and products, and creating job opportunities for small farmers and women producers through the establishment of permanent linkages between urban and rural communities.
Currently, the foundation operates three main programs:
- “Souk aal Souk” farmers’ market – a mobile farmer’s market aiming at raising awareness on local produce in academic institutions.
- “Akleh” – a traditional community kitchen that promotes rural recipes through event catering. It employs women cooks from rural Lebanon and sources its bulk ingredients from local coops and small producers.
- Food tourism – “darb el karam” is a food heritage trail connecting nine villages falling within the Shouf Cedar Biosphere Reserve, and promoting them as a food tourism destination. It aims to increase and diversify the income of small farmers, food producers, local guides, and bed and breakfast operations integrated to the trail through touristic packages centered on agricultural, pastoral and food processing activities as well as traditional cuisine.
Being perfectly in line with the objectives and the idea of SLOWMED project, which want to preserve and promote the Mediterranean Diet as fundamental immaterial heritage for the Mediterranean country, the Food Heritage Foundation has been included as associate partner in the project since the beginning of the year 2015. FHF is collaborating in the local activities for the dissemination of the project’s topics, promoting intercultural and intergenerational dialogue at all levels through local workshops, seminars aimed to spread the word of SLOMED project.
Many Thanks to FHF for its contribution!
Check it out the FHF website: http://food-heritage.org/
