Act4Food Act4Change teams up with Kidlit4Climate creatives!

Friday, June 18^th is this year’s United Nations Sustainable Gastronomy Day, and it also marks one month since the launch of a global youth-led movement Act4Food Act4Change.  

One month on, Act4Food Act4Change is proud to have garnered around 1200 pledges from countries across the world and is gearing up to enter its next phase of outreach.

Gastronomy is sometimes described as the art of food – of choosing, cooking, and eating good food. Today, food and art are combining to celebrate this milestone and global day.

To help generate more awareness and engagement with critical issues facing our planet linked to food, nutrition, and environment, on June 18^th, Act4Food Act4Change is teaming up with Kidlit4Climate [see Twitter and Instagram] to launch a new artists’ brief in solidarity with young activists calling for food systems change.

Act4Food Act4Change, supports GoodFood4All, a vision of food at the heart of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It is also building on a growing base of diverse supporters from: youth organisations (like the WAGGGS and YPARD – World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and Young Professionals for Agricultural Development); to UN organisations (like UNICEF, the FAO, and WHO – United Nations Children’s Fund, Food and Agriculture Organisation, and World Health Organisation); to NGOs like Action Against Hunger and Save The Children.

Act4Food Act4Change is building momentum in advance of the historical United Nations Food Systems Summit scheduled for September, 2021.

Food matters. No one would argue that food is not important – it’s life. But what we eat and where it comes from, how it’s produced, processed, advertised, consumed, and sold is important for many reasons.

Our food systems contribute up to 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions that drive devastating climate change. And that’s not the only dire outcome linked to our food systems. They also drive biodiversity loss, species extinction, and poor health. Some 3 billion people cannot afford healthy diets, and it’s a particularly strong injustice that many workers in food systems are themselves poorly nourished.

“Healthy, nutritious and safe food is a human right, but this right has been denied to millions, especially children and youth. Providing access to healthy food and inculcating healthy habits at an early age leads to a physically and mentally healthier society where every individual can achieve their full potential. Governments need to step up to ensure affordability, accessibility and awareness about nutritious food as part of school curriculums while putting in place restrictions on marketing of unhealthy foods and encouraging businesses producing healthy alternatives. As the youth, it is our responsibility to hold not only governments accountable but also businesses by voting with our wallets for healthy foods,” said Priya Prakash, one of the Act4Food Act4Change youth leaders based in India.

When Act4Food Act4Change launched a month ago, a major aim was to encourage young people and youth allies to pledge to focus on their personal actions and demand the actions they want decision-makers to take as a contribution to food system change. Act4Food Act4Change urges governments, businesses, UN agencies, youth, and people of all ages to take meaningful actions, promptly, to tackle major problems in our food systems such as inequity in food consumption and distribution, environmentally unsustainable food production, food production and processing practices harmful for planetary and human health.

Kidlit4Climate, the brainchild of Manchester-based illustrator Emma Reynolds, launched in 2019 to show powerfully and visually that artists working on children’s books express solidarity with student climate protestors. Kidlit4Climate is a wide network of artists working in children’s book illustration and other aspects of children’s literature, with people from all over the world taking part in their campaigns.

“It’s so important that we get behind these young activists,” said Emma Reynolds. “Food is important. Art is important. And it’s important to me that as an artist working particularly for young audiences, I am in solidarity with the young people in Act4Food Act4Change joining together to strive for a better world.”

The new art brief launched today encourages creatives with an interest in children’s literature and beyond to participate and share their contributions digitally with the hashtags #Act4Food and #Act4Change, to illustrate youth activism for wellbeing of people and planet. Creatives are invited to produce an illustration or piece of art celebrating food activism. Examples of topics the art is invited to explore include healthy eating, growing or fishing for food sustainably, advertising nourishing meals instead of harmful junk, demanding better school meals, fighting food-driven deforestation, and valuing indigenous food knowledge. The call for contributions will run for the next two months, up to August 18^th.