We are back from the last meeting of the Erasmus+ project “From Earth to Plate” in Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal. 5 participating countries met again in Portugal, Santa Maria da Feira secondary school.
Since the beginning of the project, we have been researching eating habits, comparing them with our partners in Budapest, looking for supermarkets where we can buy food without plastic packaging, finding out where our food comes from and telling each other about it in Bergamo; We have been exploring the topic of biodiversity, creating questions for the BIOPOLY game on biodiversity, sustainability, Mediterranean diet, food safety, ecological footprint, asking our friends and acquaintances how they understand the ‘Slow Food’ movement and looking for producers who are rediscovering old breeds and bringing them back to life.
In Santa Maria da Feira, during the last week of April, the Dos Loios Hotel hosted the participants and the town’s secondary school was buzzing with visitors. All the participants from the 6 countries brought their work to present to the partners. The works were numerous and all showed that European countries are discovering old plant varieties and successfully cultivating them: Lithuanians interviewed the producers of apple cheese (in Lithuania there are a great variety of apples and old breeds are successfully cultivated). The Germans like to generalize, so they talked in their slides about old varieties, their importance and the work of breeding; the Italians have a scientist, Galdini, who was happy to talk about old breeds of mountain goats and bearded maize; the Portuguese about colored beans; the French filmed a scientist outlining his philosophy and his concern about the loss of plant diversity. The project participants discussed the SLOW FOOD movement.
The last event of the project was a presentation of BIOPOLIS and a game. We were divided into 6 teams, each group with a participant from each country. All partners took the game attributes back to their schools and the game will be played by other members of the communities and together they will learn English and sustainability.
The Portuguese coordinator, Isabel Pays, made a great effort to showcase the school, the city of Santa Maria da Feira and the beauty of Porto. We were impressed by the beauty of Portuguese cities, the warmth and energy of the people and the delicious food.
We had fun eating, dancing and singing at the last party at the school where the table was set and the food was prepared by the students of the Portuguese school’s culinary sector. The beauty and taste of the sweets was amazing, they just melted in your mouth.
We said goodbye to our partners and hosts, we know that this was the last activity of the project, but we know that the ideas of the project will stay in our hearts for a long time.