NTFP-EP invites donors to crowdfund US$5,000 this September to support and train 10 Adivasi youth on forest foods in India through the GlobalGiving Accelerator campaign.
The project will support 10 youth from Tamil Nadu to undergo training in the 1st Forest Food Field School program in Adukkam, India. The scholars will learn to identify, document and harvest nutritious food from the wild, prepare meals from forest resources, and grow and maintain their own food gardens for food resilience.
The Forest Food Field School addresses the knowledge gap of youth and locals on wild foods through capacity building on relevant techniques on wild foods documentation, management, and preparation. The forest food gardens will function as demonstration plots at the local level and as a place for collection of newer, lesser-known edible plants. Seed exchanges between gardens will be made possible for biodiversity conservation. The youth will look at their landscape with a more appreciative view.
Forest foods from the wild are often neglected due to the lack of knowledge on identification and harvest techniques, processing, cooking/recipes, and the nutritive values of these plant foods. Such knowledge gaps deprive people of freely available foods that can complement what they buy in the market and add essential nutritive elements to their diets. Youth and elders in villages play an important role in strengthening these traditions. Interactions between generations need to be facilitated.
Beyond the training, the youth can apply the knowledge they learned in setting up their own wild food gardens, mentor other youth to cultivate their own community/family gardens that are easy to monitor, and contribute to their family’s healthy plate. Youth and elders’ relationship in villages will be improved as they play an important role in reviving wild food traditions. Other impacts include learning nutritive and medicinal values of a wider array of forest foods and potential cultivation.
Interested in doing your part to make this vision a reality? Click the link below to go to the donation page:
