A secondary school classroom in Amsterdam provided a perfect theatre for our InnovationNetwork meeting about the decisive phase in the Debating with Stickers concept. At the meeting, a project group of young people presented their findings from three months of street research and discussions on this concept to a select audience, including Goof Buijs of NIGZ (Netherlands Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention) and Ika van de Pas of the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality.
Jesse (20), Roxanne (26) and Punya (20) had put together a punchy presentation with a pithy narrative and vivid images. One key finding was that young people - aged between, say, 15 and 21 - may claim to be uninterested in food, but actually eat and drink virtually non-stop all day. Another was their total lack of interest in healthy eating, combined with a deep concern about getting fat. It also became clear that the daily world of young people is fairly chaotic and highly diverse.
Bilal (15) and Nadia (17) had helped out with the street research, which consisted of camera interviews. Their contribution proved crucial in getting young people of Turkish and Moroccan origin to give their food opinions on video. Despite their multi-cultural circle of friends, this reluctance took the project group completely by surprise; as soon as a camera was brought out, the atmosphere would get tense. Bilal and Nadia were able to bridge the gap.
They really impressed me too. The calm Nadia, who is training as an assistant-accountant at intermediate vocation level, told me she puts a lot of time into a youth organization in Amsterdam, work that she considers important and really enjoys doing. Bilal, in the fourth year of pre-intermediate vocational school, showed that young people are actually very 'food wise' when it comes to things that matter to them. He gave the audience a mini crash course in energy drinks, illustrating his point with four brands that he had brought along for the occasion. Many young people, he instructed us, consume these drinks all day and are very choosy about when they use which brand. At school they drink the cheaper brands, but these downmarket brands are a big no-no in the weekend, especially in the disco. That's when they flaunt the expensive brands. And though all these drinks tasted alike to me, the real connoisseurs can evidently tell the difference.
The project group ended their presentation with advice that struck me as 'super sensible'. Their advice was to set up a platform that is genuinely owned by young people and to give that platform enough time to gather and shape opinions on food, without expecting it to take immediate initiatives for change vis-รก-vis companies or politicians. That advice sounded spot on to me. And they also came up with a flagship logo for the platform, courtesy of Nikki (17). The logo did not really mean much to me, as a fifty-something, but that may be a good sign. Watch this space for more about the logo and the actions we intend to take on the project group's advice.
