School fruit scheme: which role for the European Union?

The European Commission is holding a major School Fruit Scheme (SFS) conference on 15 and 16 December 2008 in Brussels. This conference is one of the Commission initiatives in the fight against obesity and for the promotion of healthy life styles.

The aim of the conference is to exchange views, ideas and experiences on how to design and manage schemes to provide healthy food for healthy children. The development of best practice models and the establishment of a network of experts is one of the key objectives of this event.

On 8 July the Commission adopted a proposal for a European School Fruit Scheme. This conference provides the opportunity to discuss the background and objectives of this initiative as well as taking stock of the on-going process for the Commission proposal to become operational.

This conference should be seen as one of the Commission initiatives in the fight against obesity and for the promotion of healthy life styles. By bringing together project promoters from all EU Member States and all sectors concerned, a momentum will be created to develop new and further advance existing initiatives across Europe.

As part of the conference there will be a poster exhibition of best practice models to provide School Fruit Scheme (SFS) project promoters and stakeholders with examples for immediate use to establish or improve an existing SFS.

Context and purpose of the conference

The conference has five objectives:

– to present the recent Commission proposal for an EU School Fruit Scheme as well as related Commission activities (public health; education, training, culture and youth; research);

– to foster know-how transfer and exchange of experience between School Fruit Scheme project promoters in all Member States and public and private stakeholders from all sectors (agriculture, health and education);

– to establish models of best practice as to the design and management of School Fruit Schemes (based on the contributions in the four workshops and the posters submitted for the exhibition);

– to raise public awareness of the problem of poor nutrition in Europe and the existing and envisaged initiatives to address it, notably those co-funded or otherwise supported by the European Commission;

– to kick-off networking activities as part of the European School Fruit Scheme by creating databases of experts and best-practice-models.

Places are limited and priority registration for the event is given to those contributing to the general objective of the conference: project promoters and stakeholders in projects to increase consumption of fruit and vegetables by school children from the agriculture, education and public health sector.

The conference will be webstreamed, so everybody interested will have the opportunity to watch it live. The proceedings will be made available on this website after the event.

 

Dates & Venue: December 15-16, Brussels

Find out more: www.ec.europa.eu/agriculture/markets/fruitveg/