Editing Intensive Food and Beverages Course

Project Alanza

Aim and goals of the project
Promotion of the sustainable development focusing on support of local slow food movement. Teaching the basic brewing and food culturing techniques to the general public and scientific community, strengthening both home and businesses production. Build up a multimedia center which will as an open platform which will further facilitate the movement. Learn an summarize new techniques, which are being used in the region where the project takes place.  


Structure of the project – Business Plan

1. Intensive cultured food and beverage course
2. Multimedia center build up
3. Support of locally based small to medium size businesses
4. Creation of apprentice and volunteer green collar positions
5. Summit on Cultured Food and Beverages
6. Research on indigenous food and beverage culturing techniques
7. Other Activities in the region
8. Time line
9. Budget proposal


Intensive course on cultured food and beverages

Teaching the bases of brewing and food culturing with the use of local produce.

The students will get the basic knowledge of the organisms and processes involved in the food and beverage culturing. They will prepare and harvest the cultures several times to get the basic experience. There will be a final both theoretical and practical final exam to get the certificate of mastering the bases of the course. Every participant will get confirmation of attending the course and detailed materials on the techniques used. Also cultures used during the course will be handed out. The number of the participants is estimated between 10-20.


Multimedia center build up

Build up of an open multimedia center which will support the intensive course, summit and further development of the movement. This center will be an open platform modeled after the example of hacker spaces. There will be emphases on knowledge access and summarization, communication and basic electro technical support. The center has to have enough resources to function for several months obtaining part of it's budget by promotional activities. It should also be partly supported by the local businesses. The cultures used for food and drink production will be kept here, allowing them to be shared. 


Support of locally based small to medium size businesses

Several locally based businesses which already produce some cultured food or beverages will be approached and they will be offered optimization of their current production procedures and helped to start to produce new products. They will be encouraged to support the participation of their employees the courses with discount or for free. The products of the businesses will be promoted through the courses, summit and on other occasions. These activities should result in opening of several volunteer, apprentice and hopefully also payed green collar positions in at least two commercial and one open source facilities. 
 

Summit on Cultured Food and Beverages

Summit on sustainable development of local communities with focus on food and beverage culturing will be organized at the end of the course. Various speakers from the area and hopefully from abroad will be brought in to promote the movement. The summit will be used for multimedia promotion of the movement and interconnecting. Several presentations will be held through the summit accompanied by practical hands on workshops. The products of locally based businesses connected to the movement will be promoted at this event. Interlink the audience with the local multimedia open center which was created to further facilitate the cultured food and beverages movement. 


Research on indigenous food and beverage culturing techniques

There will be a study carried out on the local indigenous food and beverages culturing techniques. One to two techniques will be selected and studied in more detail. They will be practically performed by local people in original environment and described by the course participants. The techniques will be summarized in to the working manuals and will be taught as a part of the course. In the future optimization of the procedures will be performed.

Other Activities in the region

There will be short 1-2 days courses in surrounding communities on food and drink culturing helping to promote the movement and share the cultures. It is desirable that participants in the project would join the group and help with realization of the project Alanza in the another location, helping also to interlink the centers. 


Time line of the project Alanza

San Francisco, California, USA
10/9 - 22/12/2010 (in the country since 14/6/2010)
1-15/12/2010 First Intensive Workshop on Cultured Food and Beverage Preparations
17-19/12/2010 Summit, Conference on Cultured Food and Beverage Preparations
22/12/2010 Finishing up the collaboraton with facilities offering short term and long term volunteer opportunities in a food and beverage culturing. Preferably one open source non profit based and two commercial business based.