Frei Betto will be active in Cuba in the field of Nutrition Education

HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 14 (ACN) As of today in Havana, and later on in the city of Santiago de Cuba, Brazilian intellectual Frei Betto, advisor to the Cuban government for the design and implementation of the National Plan for Food Sovereignty and Nutrition Education (Plan SAN), will carry out a busy program of related popular education activities.

Elizabeth Peña Turruellas, head of the National Program of Urban, Suburban and Family Agriculture of the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAG), told ACN that this week the distinguished friend of Cuba will meet with representatives of various organizations and sectors and continue the first two workshops on Training of Trainers, held last November in Havana.

The meeting to prepare these exchanges, in coordination with the Martin Luther King Memorial Center and MINAG, will be held today (Monday) at the FAO office in this city.

On Tuesday, Frei Betto will meet with the directors of the Institute of Information and Social Communication (formerly ICRT) to design the Popular Education programs for July meetings. Then he will meet with officials of the ministries of Education, Higher Education and Public Health to discuss the promotion of a culture of nutrition in schools and communities.

Peña Turruellas said that MINAG will host on the III Training of Trainers Workshop on Food Sovereignty and Nutrition Education and the IV Workshop on Gender and Generations for Plan SAN’s success before the program is presented on Friday 18th to the diplomatic corps, international aid agencies and the foreign and national press.

Frei Betto, who has several books and articles on cooking to his credit, will also talk with directors of the Federation of Culinary Associations of the Republic of Cuba about possible nutrition education initiatives in the Island.

Once in the city of Santiago de Cuba, he will meet with local leaders and specialists and visit several places, including the Santa Ifigenia patrimonial cemetery. His program will finish with an exchange with the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Commission of the National Assembly of People's Power and the drafting team of the preliminary draft of the Food Sovereignty Law, which will be submitted for approval by the Parliament in its next session.

At the recently finished University 2020 congress, the renowned intellectual said that this program, aimed at promoting local agri-food systems, is as important as the Literacy campaign that mobilized all Cubans at the beginning of the Revolution and recalled that every year Cuba imports more than two billion dollars’ worth of food, hence the need to reduce such expenses.