Granja educativa y Laboratorio del alimento, Villa de Leyva

As chef and cooking teacher for 10 years I have had the opportunity to understand how, by developing a relationship with food, students can acquire skills necessary for life.

Studying food, not as a commodity but as a system that allows us to understand life, develop environmental awareness, understand the human body and act as a means of knowledge ( a way to foster and develop culture and life skills)

As owner of the restaurant MERCADO MUNICIPAL, inspired by the concept of farm to table cooking, I’ve come to understand that in the relation we establish with the way we produce food lies the solution for fair trade, honest food and a change in relation to the consumption of food that must transcend to the next generation.

Understanding that any change intended to impact a community must be implemented from early childhood, the restaurant will open its educational branch GRANJA VIVENCIAL Y LABORATORIO DE COCINA (EXPERIENCE BASED FARM AND KITCHEN LABORATORY) food based education center.

Villa de Leyva is a town of 12,000 inhabitants that lies in Colombias Andean Mountains. Home of Iguaque,  a protected natural  reserve , land of  moore and oak  forest with 7 glacial lakes ,where it is believed according to the myth of Bochica and Bachue ( muisca oral tradition)  that mankind originated. Its rural and peasant population has migrated rapidly towards the tourism industry looking for ¨progress¨. Increasingly, farmers knowledge is being forgotten and basic and higher education focuses on academic skills and competencies rather than on values ​​and connection with the environment.

Currently there are 1,500 children in the public education system who receive basic education designed by government policies that ignore the ancestral indigenous context in which the town is located and the richness of the natural surroundings.

Youth in Villa de Leyva move to the big city and choose careers that have little to do with the countryside and food production, giving an opportunity for large industrial food production companies to take over  the land. Farmers who grow organic vegetables sell their produce in exchange for money to buy food in the convenience store. Industrialized food is synonymous to progress.

MERCADO MUNICIPAL, through its educational project GRANJA EDUCATIVA Y LABORATORIO DE COCINA, invites students from the public and private schools of Villa de Leyva to participate in an exciting edible education process through experience based workshops where students will experience life on the farm, nourish their contact with nature and explore five basic areas based on the the food production system.

The center aims to fill a gap in the government curriculum which excludes subjects such as environmental education, history and ancestral knowledge, health, wellness and nutrition. We intend to complement educational institutions with experiential and community workshops where we include children and their families.

The values ​​on which the program is based are:

Cultivate a love for learning: Through experiential workshops we aim to demonstrate that learning outside the classroom can generate a horizontal relationship between the facilitator and student. Facilitators encourage children to develop projects based on their own interests and learning abilities, changing the classroom dynamic to a curriculum where students are creators of their own project an will develop skills in problem solving well as conflict management.

Students participate in the learning process and through their own experiences create their own word. (Indigenous term that is given to ones voice when he talks about lived experiences)

Tools for Life: The workshops will focus on the development of possible and simple solutions to complex problems of community, ecology, human relationships, and teach basic principles of daily life in the countryside such as planting, caring for animals, cooking and development of products from plants.

Harvesting community: Colombia is a country at war in transit to peace. Workshops aim to bring to the table issues that speak of our social, economic and political situation. The idea is for children to reflect upon and engage with complex issues of national reality such as rejection, minorities, gender violence, inequality and racism. These workshops will use the dining table, food and cerebration to touch issues of community and family.

Contextualized Education: Programs will be developed to contextualize students  regarding where they  live , presenting their land as a rich environments full of ancestral knowledge .

Specific topics for workshop and pedagogy approach are:

Workshops will be transversely guided by facilitators,  guests or volunteers.

The educational method aims to guide participants to generate questions, solutions and conclusions based on experimental learning.

GARDEN AND KITCHEN WORKSHOPS

Nutrition and wellness:

Ecoliteracy

Fun and game

Celebration and community building

Arts and ancestral knowledge:

This program is being developed using the fundamentals and network strategies of the Edible Schoolyard Project, education concepts and principles of Reggio Emilia and conscious education and ancestral knowledge experiences.