As a sub-project of the Arctic Council EALLU initiative, the applied project will develop and implement a university-level course on Food Innovation Leadership, for young indigenous students from the Nordic and Circumpolar-Arctic region.

The aim is to train indigenous youth in innovation, entrepreneurship and business planning, based on their own resources of food, culinary traditions and traditional indigenous knowledge.

The program is also part of the UArctic UEI Training of Future Arctic Leaders program, linking to the Arctic Indigenous Peoples´ Culinary Institute as formerly supported by NCM.

The work builds on the Arctic Council projects IPY EALÁT (2007-2011), EALLIN (2012-2015), Nomadic Herders (2012-), Arctic Resilience Report (2013), and EALLU (2015-), where also significant Nordic investments have been made previously, that can now be developed further. The pilot course will be developed at Nord University. Milestones include developing course curriculum.

The course responds to a call from the Fairbanks Declaration “…Encourage the establishment of a program for training indigenous youth in the documentation of traditional knowledge related to food, food entrepreneurship and innovation”.

In the course, students will develop a business plan for marketing indigenous foods.

Partners: Association of World Reindeer Herders (WRH)/ NEFU, CHNL/ Nord University;
Nord University Bus. School, UArctic EALÁT Institute ICR;
Association of World Reindeer Herders (WRH)/ SamiNuorra;
The University of Lapland;
Isortoq Reindeer;
Gourmand International;
Association of World Reindeer Herders (WRH).

Applicant: Anders Oskal, Secretary-General, Association of World Reindeer Herders (WRH)

Partners (see below the text)

Countries: Finland, Norway, Greenland, Sweden, Russia, the United States of America, Canada

Project start 2019, expected to be finalized in 2021.

Copyright pictures: Yadid Levy/norden.org