Onderzoek in het veld

Feeding the city and feeding the citizens - international week in Almere

 Date

Last week Aeres UAS Almere organized the international week. Themed: “Feeding the city, Feeding the citizens”, in total 9 guests from 5 different partner universities have visited and worked hard on this theme. The municipality of Almere has paid attention to this theme by connecting it to the new Flevocampus project. A known trend in the Netherlands is that consumers prefer locally produced food, but it is not always easy to find. With the international week, Aeres UAS Almere wants to shape an international minor/semester for students with this theme. Our guests are coming from Taiwan, France, Croatia and Bulgaria. Every country itself has its own challenges concerning food.

During the week we have made all kinds of visits, to inspire our guests. An example is “De Drijfveer”, a sustainable meeting location in the future Floriade area. Shaped as a house-boat, but fully produced with materials from South-Flevoland. Inspired by this location our guests wrote down their first ideas about the minor and future cooperation. 

The municipality of Almere has been working on this theme for some time, among others by creating the new district/project of Oosterwold, where habitants are responsible for their own “waste-management”, grow their own food on their own plot and are responsible for the structuring of facilities in the district. We have visited this district (even though in construction) and received extra explanation at the municipality of Almere. 

Between Almere city and Oosterwold, is city farm “De Kemphaan”, this farm has been located here since 1996 and by development of the past years, the city has grown closer to the farm, where it now has a convenient location, between the different districts of Almere. The city farm is a meeting place for organizations to cooperate and work together in the field of city farming. Whether “De Kemphaan” could feed the whole city of Almere, it was doubtful, but if other local farmers could only produce for Almere, their expectation was that it is enough to feeding the city. 


The ideas for the minor have been prepared in the shape of 3 presentations with 3 different ideas. After a morning of hard work to prepare these presentations, our guests were spoiled with a delicious lunch made by our very own European Food Business students. Homemade quiche, bapao bread, lasagna, tiramisu was served at a beautifully prepared table to our guests. After the lunch the ideas were presented to some of our students and teachers. De ideas varied between exchange of students and teachers to Taiwan and/or Croatia, but also e-learning. Content wise the guests have made job profiles to give an idea on how they would like to shape the minor. 

It was a very successful week, where not only attention was given to the general theme of the week, but also the relationship between the partner schools and Aeres UAS was strengthened. We look back with a warm feeling. The minor will be developed more in the next year and hopefully can be launched in September 2018. 

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Source: Aeres UAS Almere
17 May 2017