FUEGOS and La Secreta developed the “Food for Change“ in Manabi (Ecuador) as a response to the April 2016 earthquake that took over 700 lives, left thousands homeless, caused billions of dollars in damages, destroyed infrastructure, productive capacity, and the social fabric of the province of Manabí.  We strongly believed that the crisis caused by the earthquake and the pandemia could become an opportunity to unleash creativity to build more resilient, democratic, and inclusive societies. Food has the potential to become an engine that promotes innovation, collaboration, and progress. It also creates opportunities for disadvantaged youth and women in underserved communities. 

In addition to the Food School, we also established the Iche Food Lab, conceived as a state-of-the-art venue for the co-creation of new ways of valuing traditional Manabi food and products, with innovations based on the culinary identity of the province. Students at the Food School will collaborate with experts in cooking and sustainable agriculture, who will be invited to tackle specific challenges in order to co-create innovative prototypes that allow for new ways to prepare products from the farm and the sea, constantly aiming at combining traditional knowledge with the latest technological know-how. The innovative culinary creations of the Iche Food Lab will then be disseminated, commercialized and shared, to be used and enjoyed across the globe.

Following the learning-by-doing philosophy, the Iche Food School is training 13 students, as well has also thought different course to local women and youth, as well as 80 rural producers and 100 gastronomic entrepreneurs from Manabi province to make possible a transition towards more sustainable food production methods, culinary innovation, responsible consumption, and associativity, that achieves greater coordination between the different links in the value chain. 

In parallel to the training processes, the project is establishing the first food innovation network made up of three laboratories located in different regions of Ecuador. This Network will develop a joint research agenda that will promote the combination of traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge and the participation of actors from the entire gastro-food value chain. With the advice of the Basque Culinary Center (“BCC”), an internationally recognized center for its trajectory in the gastronomic sector, ICHE opens collaborative research methodologies and protocols to generate and promote laboratories.

Additionally, the exchange of researchers will be promoted between the laboratories of the network with the universities and the private sector, seeking to catalyze an ecosystem of innovation and gastro-food entrepreneurship in Ecuador.

As a result of this component, the reinvention of recipes and local products will be achieved through prototypes with potential for the food and catering industry. It will be sought that the processes have a "health" approach, good practices in food handling, and safety with a technological approach.

The Food School - Restaurant - Lab Iche is a space of knowledge sharing and open innovation. In our classrooms producers, entrepreneurs and experts meet around food to increase their capacities to understand the causes of the most pressing challenges their communities are facing, as well as develop their own capacities to work together around concrete projects for mutual improvement. 

At the Food School leaders from the local communities that surround it share their knowledge and experiences with students. At the Food Lab, local producers and experts meet to share traditional as well as scientific knowledge to co-create new recipes and products that are healthy and with the potential to generate wealth in local communities. 
Given the potential of food to bring together people from different sectors and from rural and urban areas, our ultimate goal is to increase capacities for collaboration at the local, regional, national, and international levels. 

Gastronomy can catalyze other artistic expressions and creative industries such as design, music, painting, and cinema, among others. For this reason, as a next phase of the project, we plan to build, together with the School and Foodlab, a cultural residence that receives local and international artists to promote art as a development strategy and as a fundamental component of the systems of well-being, mental health, and social cohesion.