Fly away with us to meet 10 entrepreneurs in the field of Indian sustainable food, during 6 months with… a web-series !

Don't forget the subtitles !

The Food Sense Tour India in a nutshell

• Two adventurous best friends leaving for a six-months tour in India
• The discovery of sustainable food practices to incite us to rethink our ways of production and consumption
• A 10-episode web-series, plenty of articles, recipes and useful tips !

Today, we need YOU :

Get on board and take part in our crowdfunding initiative that will fund our film equipment !

The Food Sense Tour girls, who are they ?

MAUD, 22 years old

What you probably know about her : 

Master student at the Institute of Political Sciences, Lille (northern region of France) majoring in Conflict and Development

She wrote a research paper on the links between Buddhism, environmental ethics and the protection of Nature

What you dream to know about her : At the age of 1, Maud shouted “me, me!” every time she heard paper, believing someone was opening a pack of biscuits for her.

Her strengths :

#Her cooking skills

#Her organizational skills

Her weaknesses :

#Her inability to distinguish right from left (Claire will be the one to ask directions in the rickshaws)

#Her obsession with always needing to have the final say (especially when she argues with Claire)

Her biggest pride : she walked across the Negev desert completely alone, with a box of lentils for only company.

And for real ? That’s Maud !

CLAIRE, 22 years old

What you probably know about her :

Master student at the Institute of Political Sciences, Lille (northern region of France) majoring in International Finance and Trade

She organized the Social Business Edition of a Startup Weekend in Roubaix (northern region of France), which is a 54-hour contest during which small teams have to create a company

She wrote a professional report together with the Social Factory, Paris, about the link between numeric innovation in the incubation of social startups

What you dream to know about her :

Because she used to be reeeeally underfed when she was young, Claire bit a piece of her cousin’s thigh.

Her strengths :

#She can handle red hot chili, after a six months-stay in an Indian family

#She is a good negotiator (especially when it’s about food)

Her weaknesses :

#Her spelling mistakes

#Her questionable humor

Her biggest pride : she backpacked alone through Myanmar, Lao and Cambodia.

And for real ? That’s Claire !

Claire + Maud = Claude

Even though food unites people much more than sport does, we actually met while playing tennis. Our destiny was intertwined, from the moment we both joined the culinary association of our school. Two years later, we temporarily split ways when Maud moved to Israel for one year and Claire to Philadelphia, for six months and Delhi, for another six months.

Thanks to these different life experiences, we realized how strong the environmental impact of our industrialized food system was. That’s the reason why we decided to challenge ourselves :

Put our studies on hold for one year and commit entirely to understanding the indian sustainable food system and meeting with 10 local key players !

The Food Sense Tour, what is it ?

Why India ?

Besides its millenary history, breathtaking landscapes, infinite color schemes and incomparable smells, India is :

• A major demographic challenge (1.3 billion mouths to feed): that’s a lot !
• A massive agricultural power : oh my ...
• An ecological mindset: Sikkim state has turned into the first fully organic state of India in 2016
• Cultural and spiritual traditions that give food a huge importance : how nice !

All these are good reasons for us to choose India as our experimental field !

Our itinerary : 

1 - Under the Mango Tree (Mumbai): a social enterprise that seeks to help small farmers to commercialize organic honey

2 - Organic Mandya (Mandya district): an NGO that supports farmers in order to make the district fully organic

3 - First Agro (Talakadu) : a company that produces and sells guaranteed fruits and vegetables without MGO or pesticides and are CODEX labeled by the Worldwide Health Organization

4 - The Green Path (Bangalore) : it is a group of organic initiatives that includes organic farms, restaurants and selling points

5 - Solitude Farm (Auroville) : a permaculture farm and an organic restaurant

6 - Agragamee (Kumbharshila) : a NGO that supports eco-villages in Odisha state

7 - Makaibari Tea Estate (Darjeeling and Kurseong) : a farmers’ cooperative that produces and sells organic tea

8 - Navdanya (Dehradun) : an experimental farm created by Vandana Shiva in order to teach agro-ecology to farmers and how to treat seeds. We will make a short documentary about their initiative to start a partnership with the French NGO “SOL” as part of their project “Seeds of Hope”, which has been selected as one of the 100 Projects For The Projects, of the COP 21 !

9 - The Altitude Store (Delhi) : an organic store

10 - Baikaka Krishi Kendra Farm (Anand) : a biodynamic farm

A few figures to see things more clearly : 

A web-series, really ? Do you even know how to shoot a film ?

What ? Ten 8 minute-capsule videos shot by ourselves

Who ? Ten social entrepreneurs as they face their everyday life, their structures, their challenges and find solutions

Why ? Because one short video is worth as much as long speeches

And to go further ? We will write a numeric guidebook with recipes and lots of cooking advice, so… no more excuses !

Who inspired us ?

The concept of Food Sense Tour is a program of the Make Sense Community, whose goal is to build and generate a strong community among social entrepreneurs spread around the world.

Sense Tours aim to question ourselves around one topic, in our case: the place of food in society.

Before us, two other food-lover groups left to explore the world and its flavors: Bruno, the project initiator and his Food Sense Tour and Maud, Helen and Louise, who went to South America. 

Two Food Sense Tours will take place at the same time as ours, one in Western Africa and the other one in the USA. Every 3 weeks, we will publish an article and a video to explore the links between our entrepreneurs, in partnership with MakeSenseStories, Make Sense's chain ! 

Do you want to whisper private, sweet and loving words to us ?

With us, no risk involved, there isn’t even a secretary will read our emails for us. Trust us and write us at: the.sustainable.food.change@gmail.com

We have also a Facebook page and Twitter & Instagram accounts.

What is the crowdfunding for ? 

The money we’ll hopefully get from the crowdfunding (4 500 euros) will fund the audio-visual material for the web-series (4 140 euros) and the Miimosa commission (360 euros)                                                                                                                         

Full disclosure is our mantra, here is our detailed budget :

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- THANK YOU - 

The Food Sense Tour India is an adventure inviting us to rethink the importance of food. It’s also and foremost a human adventure and it is really thanks to YOU that our field work will reach YOUR screens !

As we often say: Together, we are stronger !

So don’t hesitate anymore, like it, share it with your friends, lover(s) and grandma :)