Between November 2021 and January 2022, LUPPA – Laboratório Urbano de Políticas Alimentares (Urban Food Policy Lab) held a series of workshops and seminars attended by representatives of governments and organized civil society from the more than 20 cities selected for the 1st edition of LUPPA Lab. These were moments of intense exchange of experiences, and each participating city worked on developing a roadmap to identify impact actions, that is, existing or new initiatives that need to be strengthened, to drive the transformation of the food system toward fairer, healthier and more sustainable systems. Joining us on this journey were the mentor cities Belo Horizonte, Curitiba and Recife, which, through their participation in the workshops and seminars, shared their experiences and collaborated in developing the strategic Food and Nutrition Security plans.

Selected cities will receive mentoring

As a way of deepening contact with the Mentor Cities, some of the participating cities were selected to receive mentoring through technical cooperation offered to the selected city. For this selection, factors such as participation and engagement in LUPPA activities were assessed, as well as the match between the interests and challenges of the participating cities and the expertise and technical capacity of each mentor city. The cities that will receive mentoring from Belo Horizonte are: Contagem – MG, Petrolina – PE and Teresina – PI. The city of Curitiba will support Niterói – RJ, Porto Alegre – RS and Sobral – CE. The city of Recife will work with Anchieta – SC, Brejo da Madre de Deus – PE, Caruaru – PE and Maracanaú – CE. The activities of this first LUPPA cycle run until September 2022. Periodic follow-up meetings will be held so that the 23 participating cities can continue to deepen their exchange of experiences and report on the progress of the actions defined in their anchor projects. LUPPA is a project of Instituto Comida do Amanhã, in partnership with ICLEI América do Sul (ICLEI South America), supported by Instituto Clima e Sociedade and Instituto Ibirapitanga, with methodological partnership from Reos Partners. This 1st edition also had institutional support from the City Governments of Belo Horizonte, Curitiba and Recife, the Group for Studies, Practices and Research on Food Environments and Health at UFMG, Humane Society International and Alimentação Consciente Brasil.