This time it was TV Pink to interview BSN's Ratko Bojović for the 6 am Daybreak programmebroadcast on 1st November. Although the stimulus for the interview was the food poisoning outbreak in several Belgrade schools reported in October, this time word had evidently got around that there is a major project in Serbia that is doing something to improve school meals. Thus, the focus of the interview was mainly to find out what Strength2Food is doing in Serbia and how it aims to help improve meals in Serbia's primary schools. Ratko was able to describe howthe teams in Serbia aim [...]

Due to the recent case of food poisoning in Belgrade elementary schools, we had the opportunity to be a guest on Serbian national television, this time on RTS 1's morning program, in a show that was broadcast on Friday, October 13. Colleague Gordana Kosanović from the Ministry of Education (MPNTR) and our head of education and training Steve Quarrie presented the new initiative of the Minister of Education on improving the quality of nutrition in primary schools and the progress achieved so far on the Strength2Food project in data collection and the selection of schools for the pilot project . [...]

Steve Quarrie presented the Strength2Food project and various aspects of activities in Serbia in the session Rural development and agro-economy at Agrosym 2017 in front of the team of EUTA and the Ministry of Education (MPNTR). The presentation and later discussion focused on the connection between schools that prepare food in their kitchens, namely in 4 regions: Belgrade, Novi Sad, the wider area of Valjevo and Arilje; and suppliers who supply schools with food products produced in Serbia, but also imported from abroad. Some of the data collected so far on the S2F project were presented, which show that, for [...]

Four primary schools in Belgrade have just suffered from an outbreak of food poisoning from a meal provided by a catering company, with 135 children suffering from severe stomach problems and seven briefly hospitalised (Tuesday, 3rd October). This has raised the issue of schools providing their own meals to ensure that health and safety standards are not compromised by awarding tenders to the caterer offering the cheapest meals, whatever the quality. Fortuitously for Strength2Food, this outbreak occurred the day that BSN staff Steve Quarrie and Ratko Bojovic were at a meeting in Serbia's state television organisation (RTS) discussing how RTS [...]

During a recent visit to the village school Prota Mateja Nenadović in Brankovina near Valjevo, the school principal Milica Ostojić surprised us with the news that she arranged a television interview for us (Ratko Bojović and Steve Quarrie, BSN / EUTA) on local television, Vujić TV, Valjevo. VTV is available on cable television in Serbia, and is especially watched in the wider area of ​​Valjevo. The interview will be broadcast on the evening of June 29 and will be available soon on YouTube. Milica is one of the most enterprising principals of primary schools in Serbia with many years of [...]

Steve Quarrie, the team leader of BSN, now called European Training Academy (EUTA), has recruited a team of PhD students for Strength2Food, who are eager to take part in an international research project and to start collecting and analysing real data. In total, Strength2Food has now acquired 18 young researchers, past, present and future PhD students from both Belgrade and Novi Sad, who will focus on aspects of the WP9.1 school meals pilot scheme in Serbia. Working in groups of two they will support the work currently being done by the Ministry of Education and Science (MPN) and EUTA to [...]