Sustainable nutrition for climate action: enablers and barriers to shifting to more sustainable food choices

Healing is in the Pot is centered on learning actions around sustainable food choices and how these can make a positive contribution to climate action, as well as enabling people to live healthier lives. We put together a team of people who wanted to learn more, share indigenous knowledge and experiences, explore new tastes, live healthier lives and care about the problems our planet is facing. As part of the transformative experience we tracked the learning of our team as they tried out different recipes and shared what they have learned with their wider communities.

What has changed as a result of the project?

• Participants perspectives on their relationship with food for both environmental and health reasons have changed. In some cases these changes are big, and in others smaller, but ultimately an awareness of impacts has been created, with an ability to act on that awareness if the person chooses to act.
• Researchers have changed, in terms of their understanding of what works well educationally, as well as how to monitor, evaluate and learn in a reflexive manner
• We would love to share that Action Learning, combined with an open and reflexive approach to organising and running both a course and a research project, is possibly fundamental to success, if success is measured by change as opposed to knowledge transfer.

The core actions that participants developed through the Okuphilisayo Kusembizeni course were ethical action, environmental impact action, healthy choice actions and personal capacity development. Participants made changes to their lives, their mindsets and their choices that fell into these categories, and evidence of this was gathered systematically.

Ultimately, it is thought that the reason for this educational response is that the way in which the learning was structured, via the interactivity allowed through Active Learning and co-creation and a transformative approach to learning. This stimulated the space for trust, fun, open discussion, questions, experimentation, and reflection. 

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