Sustainable* Food and Family Garden Day was carried out to promote sustainable food among the Chinese community. We invited Mary from Bwyd Abertawe to talk us through the Sustainable Food Places Framework & Swansea Food Charter which content was useful to allow the participants to know the food they eat and buy has a significant impact on our wonderful planet.
The talk was followed by a quiz to enhance what was learnt.We split the Parents and Children into two groups to compete with each other, here are the comments they gave at the end of the quiz:
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Do not waste food
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Buy sustainable food
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Buy from local farmers / help local community grower
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Turn from low cost to true cost
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Support local businesses
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Buy organic
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Grow our own food
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Saving food since there are lots of people who don’t have enough food
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Look for Fairtrade** sticker on foods products
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Don’t buy more than you need
And the winning team was the CHILDREN! They were presented with CIWA’s own fans; perfectly ready for the upcoming summer heat, and amused to see their parents being punished for losing.
In order to uderstand our diet habits, we let the participants do a voting activity, and here is the result from our 32 votes that day:
1.Where do you prefer to get food from：
74% prefer to buy from the supermarket
13% prefer to buy from local farmer
13% prefer self-grown vegetables
2. What do you prefer:
62.5% chose to cook themselves
37.5% chose to eat at restaurants
0% chose to order takeaway / ready meals
From the above, we obviously need to support the local produce more. If we can harvest our home-grown food, it will certainly bring us more satisfaction and happiness.
Everyone commented that it was a very meaningful event. Thanks to our volunteers who prepared delicious food and we practiced what we preached, i.e. all food was finished!
Remark:
*In 1987, the United Nations Brundtland Commission defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Today, there are almost 140 developing countries in the world seeking ways of meeting their development needs, but with the increasing threat of climate change, concrete efforts must be made to ensure development today does not negatively affect future generations.
**Fairtade : Fair Pay, No Force Labour, Protect the Environment and Safe Working Condition.
– We regret that we could not carry out this activity in a garden. However, if you would like to pay a visit to the local vegetable garden, we are pleased to arrange for you. Get in touch with FooSeng if you are interested.
