A Cooking Challenge, filled with wine and cheese, set the stage for a discussion on combatting global hunger, encouraging sustainability, and fighting food waste.
Kitchen Connection allows lay and professional cooks to host or participate in live, online, and interactive cooking classes that support the United Nations Goal SDG 2: Zero Hunger.
The SDG 2 Advocacy Hub brings together NGOs, advocacy groups, civil society, the private sector and UN agencies to share expertise, ideas, and collaboration on campaigns so that our overall impact as a community of influencers is increased.
Together, in honor of the United Nations General Assembly, on September 25th, 2018, they hosted a Cooking Challenge in collaboration with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the New York University Nutrition without Borders group.
Award-Winning Chefs Grace Odogbili from Nigeria, Pierre Thiam from Sénégal, and Karabo Moeng from South Africa partook in a cook-off whereby they had to create a recipe using an array of surprise ingredients that would be nutritionally sound, financially feasible, and culturally appropriate to the region in under 30 minutes and encouraging the least waste. Pierre Thiam’s team from Sénégal won the people’s choice award and the overall award with a Fonio dish, inspired from Thiam’s native hometown.
The cook-off was proceeded by a panel discussion with Hawa Diallo, UN DPI Informations Officer, Paul Newnham, Coordinator at the SDG 2 Advocacy Hub for the World Food Programme, Charlotte Salford, Associate Vice President at IFAD, and Florence Sibomana, Scaling Up Nutrition and Global Citizen Youth Representative.
As of the most recent SOFI report, 821 million people are undernourished, with over a quarter of them living in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Together, they discussed the many different roles that chefs, farmers, policymakers, and youth alike play in achieving a reduction in malnutrition globally.
In 2019, Kitchen Connection is launching its #KitchenConnectionGoestoAfrica campaign, which will highlight one country from the African region each month, as part of an advocacy effort to shed light on the disproportionate distribution of hunger in the region, as well as to encourage an increased awareness of the region’s culinary diversity.
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