Implementation of ‘Bites: when nutrition meets SDGs‘ (SoI-ES-516)

Introduction

The starting point is a new exhibition space that opens in the museum where I work as coordinator of non-formal educators, the Domus in A Coruña. It is in this context that we started to think about how to make the most of the content of the exhibition and the learning scenario was developed. Our activity “When nutrition meets the SDGs” will be implemented in the Domus museum and specifically in the exhibition “Bocados”.

The aim of this exhibition is to make everyone who visits us aware of the importance of nutrition and the Sustainable Development Goals, to think globally and act locally for the transformation towards more sustainable nutrition and a more sustainable world. To do this, we work on scripts for the visits as an introduction to the activities and workshops. 

For my part, as the person responsible for training the educators, I start by selecting explanatory modules from the exhibition to introduce the topics that will later be covered in the activities for the pupils. It is important to have a general knowledge of the issues we are interested in highlighting.

My role is to train the museum’s non-formal educators to run workshops for school groups aged between 10 and 14. The maximum number of students per workshop is 30, divided into groups of 5, and the place where the workshop is held is the “Open Laboratory” of the Domus, which has the technical and audio-visual support for the workshop.

Our aim is to raise awareness of the SDGs while teaching our students about the importance of good quality and sustainable nutrition, as well as offering them the tool provided by the Europeana library.

Once we have gone deeper into the SDGs and the Bocados exhibition and learned about the legacy of the Europeana library, we started to work on the activities we are going to carry out with the students. 

It should be noted that each of the educators takes what they have learnt to their own field based on the basic guidelines; the interaction with the pupils is created by each educator individually. The questions they ask them to introduce the aspects of each activity and to find the objective of the activities are their own work; this makes them feel more comfortable and confident when teaching the workshop and enriches the content in the discussions we hold.

Stages of implementation

We designed 3 activities starting with an introduction on nutrition and the UN SDGs.

We watched a video about SDGs´ with a duration of 7 minutes.                                              

First activity: Discover cereal! This activity is related to SDG 2: Zero hunger. Duration: 20 minutes.

The educators explain to the students the WHO recommendation on the intake of cereals, which provide 55% of the energy we eat, being the main food intake in poor countries.

Materials needed: cereals, pictures of the cereal plant and an iPad.

We hand out bags with grains of the 8 most consumed cereals in the world with images of the cereal plant. They will have to look carefully for a few minutes, then they will participate in a Kahoot, which is an online game, to guess the correct name of the grain from the image of the plant.

Europeana images: The Naturaslist Biodiversity Center, Leiden, The Netherlands and Kew Gardens, UK.

Kahoot: https://create.kahoot.it/details/6b0383ab-0982-489a-a574-8337a405f386

Second activity: Fruit for all. Related to SDG 1. End poverty. Duration: 15 minutes.

The educator talks about the need to eat fruit and vegetables and their importance in providing vitamins and minerals.

Materials needed: coloured paper and instructions for the pupils to make their own origami fruit.

The students make origami fruits and visualise the Origami Europeana Tour to learn about the possibilities of this paper folding technique as well as a search in Europeana to see pieces created with this technique.

Third activity: Be a molecular cook. Related to SDG 4. Quality education. Duration: 20 minutes.

The educator introduces the activity by talking about the different techniques for cooking food and how, depending on whether one technique or another is used, we will preserve more or less of the nutritional and vitamin value of the food. The school environment is a good setting to teach the importance of cooking and eating healthily with appetising and sustainable diets.

The materials needed are: 

• Sodium alginate
• Calcium chloride 
• water 
• strainer 
• Pasteur pipettes 
• food colouring 
• hand blender 
• The activity consists of making fake caviar or spherifications.

Outcomes

During both the training and the development of the activities by the educators, my perception was that it is essential to work with tools that make it easier for us to set up playful and quality activities. The Europeana library acts as an access point to millions of digital resources from museums, libraries, collections that help us to complement and expand, as support material, the topics we want to deal with.

In this specific case, we have observed that many of the students were not aware of the resource that this open window to knowledge represents and that can help them in future work outside the activities scheduled in a museum.

Many students were surprised by all the information they could have access to thanks to Europeana. But not only the pupils, as our educators have used it to broaden their knowledge and use its contents for their work as disseminators.

Pupils are very receptive when they see themselves as part of the process. The fact that the activity consists not only of an explanation but also that they are involved in researching material, in dialogues and debates on the topic, that their opinion matters, to seek with them a conclusion or an answer to what we can do and what is in our hands, is a very important cross-cutting way of learning.

Being able to teach with games, research, images, videos, in a playful and active way for students, is the best way to educate. To make them think, ask questions, find answers by playing and researching.

The conclusion is that with this activity we have brought many students closer to the SDGs (a large number of participants did not know about them), to the importance of healthy eating and responsible and sustainable consumption of our resources. We have shown them the Europeana tool, which has allowed us to make the activity more enjoyable and fun with all the range of possibilities it provides.

It has been very satisfying and rewarding, as there are many students who pass through the museum and our Laboratory.

We have had fun while debating and learning about such transcendental topics as healthy nutrition, the SDGs and our responsibility towards the planet we inhabit. It is essential and necessary to continue along these lines. 

Link to the learning scenario implemented: https://teachwitheuropeana.eun.org/learning-scenarios/bites-when-nutrition-meets-sdgs-ls-me-554/

Do you want to discover more stories of implementation? Click here.

CC BY 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Helsinki City Museum.