Last Monday, April 15, the mentoring sessions offered with the support of LUPPA’s mentor cities began, and they will continue until July of this year. Mentor cities are cities that have already matured and advanced their food and nutrition security planning and can therefore contribute their accumulated expertise and experience to the participating cities.
The mentor cities of the program’s 3rd edition are Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Osasco, Recife and São Paulo, and the mentee cities were selected during LUPPA LAB #3, held from March 19 to 22, 2024 in Curitiba. Belo Horizonte will work with Careiro, Portel and Nova Lima, Curitiba with Araucária, Itajaí and Caxias do Sul, Osasco with Mãe do Rio, Campinas and Caruaru, Recife with Caucaia, Jaguaretama and João Pessoa, and São Paulo will mentor Alenquer, Maricá and Palmas.
The mentoring methodology seeks to build a learning space among municipal government officials and other actors in urban food systems. For the director of Comida do Amanhã, Juliana Tângari, mentoring can also spark partnerships between cities: “We later find out that they are making parallel, bilateral agreements, visits. It’s really great to see this environment of cooperation being created and strengthened,” she commented.
The mentoring consists of 4 virtual workshops of approximately two hours each. The first meeting is for introductions and alignment, and the methodology of the following meetings is to build a space for mutual learning among municipal officials, technical cooperation and exchange of experiences.
Sharing both success stories and the challenges faced makes it possible to establish a learning environment that goes beyond theory, with those who have learned in practice. For João Perez, Executive Secretary of Food and Nutrition Security, Sustainability and Social Innovation of Osasco, mentoring is an environment of a great deal of sharing. “The experience is very successful. Osasco, despite being a mentor city, has learned a lot from the mentee cities. There is an exchange, a horizontal synergy, not a hierarchy between cities,” he highlighted.
About LUPPA:
LUPPA is a project of Instituto Comida do Amanhã, co-organized with ICLEI América do Sul, with full support from Instituto Ibirapitanga, ICS – Instituto Clima e Sociedade, Fundação José Luiz Egydio Setúbal and Porticus, institutional support from FAO Brazil – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and methodological partnership with Reos Partners Brasil.