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Today welcomes in the second day of the first ever Parabere Forum - a non-profit international platform featuring women’s views and voices on major food issues.
Yesterday saw talks from Imma Guixé of Oxfam, Isabel Soares from Fruta Feia talking about her unique project in Portugal to save the world’s ugly fruits and DR. Vandana Shiva from India - to name just a handful.
Tweets from the event have been both inspiring and motivational as women and men from across the industry comment on the presentations and some of the startling figures given by speakers.
The forum is organised by a collective of women from across the industry one of which is journalist Maria Canabal, president of the forum. We caught up with her just before the event to find out exactly why the forum was started and exactly what they hope to achieve.
"What I think is that if you really want to create a powerful and global network we need to be together and we need to strengthen the influence of women in the food sector and the only way to do this is to have a global network.
"This is something in general we’re not so good at as women. The main aim is to create this network and another thing is that we also want to promote diversity. When you’re a student in a culinary school and you see all the teachers are men, when you see these competitions all the time the judges are men - somehow in your mind, when you’re in culinary school, you’re only 16, you’re still not an adult but some way you understand it’s only for men.
"Maybe there are missing models, we need to promote the mentoring but to tell to the girls that ‘yes, you can be a successful chef, it’s not only for men.’ We need to promote all these references and have some models for them. "We would like to draw up an innovative action plan and have some debates in order to encourages women’s contribution to the food sector. It’s not a forum only for women, there is a lot of men coming but it’s clear that the target is to promote the role of women in the industry."
Stay tuned as we update the tweets from day two and bring you more news on the action plan drawn up by people attending the event.
