Strengthening food systems in urban and peri-urban (UPU) areas is vital for global health, sustainability and resilience. The CULTIVATE project contributes directly to this by collaboratively developing, with communities, local governments, and FSI experts (a co-design process), tools to support sustainable UPU food sharing initiatives (FSIs). FSIs are collective actions where people share food and related resources, such as community gardens and kitchens and surplus food redistribution initiatives, to create more resilient food environments. CULTIVATE creates large-scale impact by developing and disseminating vital tools under the umbrella of the CULTIVATE Compass containing the:
· Food Sharing Map: An AI supported mapping tool and an interactive map of FSIs searchable by location, activity and type of sharing. The expandable baseline map provides robust data on the nature and distribution of FSIs for local food planning across 100+ UPU areas in Europe. It assists food supply actors who wish to donate food to FSIs near their operations. It identifies the precise location of FSIs for citizens wishing to engage in food sharing where they live. It helps FSIs to connect with similar organisations in their area, nationally, and internationally
· Food Sharing Calculator: Three tools to establish the costs, benefits and impacts of FSIs, ensuring their contributions to the sustainable development goals are fully recognised by participants, funders and regulators. These interactive tools generate key information for decision-making, identifying both the specific investments needed to help FSIs grow across the EU and the positive contributions FSIs make to the sustainable development goals.
· Menu of Good Governance: This expandable tool supports both governments and FSIs to identify solutions to regulatory mechanisms that constrain FSIs activities. Providing a searchable suite of governance actions this tool facilitates appropriate regulation of existing FSIs and helps generate a policy context that encourages the establishment of new ones.
· Library of Citizen Engagement: This tool helps FSIs, community organisers and municipalities improve the knowledge, skills and capabilities of citizens in relation to food. It provides an extensive list of engagement tools and games and successful stories of citizen engagement. All are searchable by format, purpose, and target audience, and categorised by the resources required to run them.
· Food Sharing Community of Practice (CoP): This network facilitates knowledge and experience exchange amongst FSIs and allies, helping organise and amplify the collective impacts and concerns of FSIs at local, national and EU levels. The diverse skills of CULTIVATE’s core FSI partners, and the resources developed through CULTIVATE with them, form an expandable CoP of 100+ FSIs.
