Food system services

Visioning Workshop

Visioning workshops are designed to encourage participants to dream or envision a future that transcends the constraints of today's complex food systems. In a world often burdened by pressing challenges such as climate change and food insecurity, the transformative potential of envisioning a brighter future is often overlooked. These workshops centered around proactive listening and intercultural communication skills to shift perspectives and dream beyond the current paradigms in our food environments. Whether it involves co-creating a vision for a sustainable hydroponic farm, engaging in mutual learning through a two-way mentorship, or collaborating as a multi-stakeholder group to identify the key elements of change necessary to achieve our target vision, these exercises are intended to help us collectively develop visions that extend beyond what may seem initially achievable.

Action roadmap

While having a clear vision is essential, the path to achieving it can often be complex and challenging. Support for Action Roadmapping is a service that to transform your vision into tangible steps. Going beyond the surface, these workshops include building a pathway-to-impact backcasting map, anticipating accelerators to address potential obstacles, developing a game-changing sustainable business model, and illustrating the relationships and feedback loops within a complex system using causal loop diagrams. This approach utilizes open-access tools and resources and is customized to facilitate food systems transformation toward positive, concrete, sustainable, and equitable impact. This service equips participants with a step-by-step process towards “bending the curve” finding innovations, resolutions, and assessing trade-offs.

Adapting Tracks

Creating tangible and lasting impact within your food system demands a systematic approach. Adapting Tracks also called MEL (Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning) is designed to learn from previous initiatives and adapt current ones to ensure a better understanding of areas of improvement which, as a result, contributes towards a more sustainable initiative. This service is designed to facilitate long-term practice change in this transformative journey. By bringing together key food system stakeholders and employing a rigorous, science-based research approach, the primary goal of this service is to reach the theory of change. The aim of this service is not only to envision transformative change but also to strategically and systematically plan, implement, and experience real impact.

Guiding Diets

A wide range of stakeholders have called for the need for the integration of environmental sustainability considerations in national food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs). This service is created to support the adaptation of national FBDGs at the regional and sub-regional levels based on agroecology, lifestyle, culture and other food systems related factors. This services includes translating the FBDGs into learning materials for agriculture experts, health professionals, nutrition professionals, elementary and secondary school teachers and students, and as advocacy tools to inform program and policy.