Yap Fusion

Yap Fusion's outreach strategy is tailored in different ways to match how food is perceived in social power relations, hierarchies, and within generations. The initiative addresses consumption and consumers' choices through a tool - food - that organisers describe as itself the mirror of societies, their interactions, and the changes in the way communication is handled and perceived. Economy, sustainability, social structures, and health are all looked at through the social experience of "the meal".

Yap Fusion started informally to operate as an initiative under the umbrella of Yap Women Association (YWA) in November 2012. The start-up phase lasted 3 months and was based on volunteer exchanges between the women of YWA and the founder of Yap Fusion (a developmental economist working with Yap state government through the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) agency). Given the success of these experiments with processing local food in an innovative way, Yap Fusion was officially established as non-profit cooperation under the YWA umbrella in February 2013.

The communication and outreach strategy varies according to the intended group. While direct contact and tasting meetings have been organised to reach women, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogging are designed to speak to youth, and participation with tasting samples in the private sector and government meetings intend to reinforce communication with adults, the elderly, and traditional networks.

To cite a specific example of how Yap Fusion works in practice, in April 2013, Yap Fusion was invited via the YWA to present their Yam Pizza at Yap's Gilmar Community School, which hosts an annual food exhibition and tasting contest showcasing local recipes while promoting healthy consumption choices. (Each student at this school has a designated patch of the school's garden to grow produce, and they are taught how to plant and harvest food as part of the formal curriculum throughout the year.) Children, grouped a classrooms, participate in the annual event by competing against each other through presenting prepared local dishes and desserts. To kick off the event, Yap Fusion's founder spoke to the students about the health and economic benefits of local food choices. The children then took part in 25 different local food presentations. At each classroom presentation, a menu, the recipe, and the local ingredient names in English and Yapese were on display with the dishes. Yap Fusion's local pizza was served in the outdoor Koyeng - local hut - along with an array of local fruit and side dishes. Six pizzas were served on local tea leaves to reinforce Yap Fusion's sustainability message.

Food Security