Green Gown Awards 2014 - Student Engagement - Manchester Metropolitan Uni - Large Institution Winner

Met MUnch

Met MUnch is a student-led food network with a passion for food! Capturing a zeitgeist for ‘pop-up’ sustainable food events, it brings affordable, nutritional, local and sustainable food to student communities and beyond.

Nurturing entrepreneurship, social enterprise and transforming engagement skills for students and staff, Met MUnch provides an interactive platform for campus-wide and community knowledge exchange, through foodie fun.

Haleh Moravej (Senior lecturer in Food and Nutrition) conceived Met MUnch in 2011 to provide real life experiences, promote sustainable nutritious lifestyles and provide students with an opportunity to test-out their skills before they graduate as global citizens. ‘Celebrity Chef’ auditions recruited 25 nutritionists who have enthused audiences to adopt healthier lifestyles ever since. This group now has 133 ‘Met MUnchers’, making food fun, connecting with the curriculum, and providing tremendous opportunity for peer-to-peer engagement.

Met MUnch is acclaimed across MMU, has full Senior Management Engagement and is a powerful catalyst for community engagement and partnership across Manchester.

Top 3 learnings

1 Make it exciting, innovative and inclusive, use the right language and link it to social networks
2 Make it relevant and about issues that students and staff can connect with
3 Use a partnership approach, learning from each other.

What the judges say... 

A highly innovative communitybased project that has adapted well to new opportunities. Strong student engagement activities run off a small budget.

What it means to win ...

“We put sustainability at the heart of everything we do at Manchester Metropolitan University and Met MUnch is a fantastic example of how it can be combined with employability skills and community engagement. More and more of our students and staff are energised and inspired by these agendas, so we are absolutely thrilled to have our successes to date recognised nationally through the Green GownAwards 2014.”

Professor John Brooks, Vice-Chancellor

Videos

• Met MUnch (click to hide)