On 20 October 2017 during the 3rd MUFPP Annual Gathering in Valencia, the 2017 edition of the Milan Pact Awards was assigned to the city of Toronto (Canada) for the good practice “Community Food Works for Newcomers: Using food as tool for settlement and integration”. The programme provides learner-centred training at no cost to obtain a Food Handler Training and Certification. This supports refugees and other newcomers to access employment in the food sector, helps them improve basic food and nutrition skills, and perhaps most importantly, uses food as a vehicle for immigrant and refugee settlement and integration into their new community.
The city of Antananarivo (Madagascar) received the second monetary prize for the project “Challenging Environment”. The city launched an “Urban Agriculture Programme” which promotes the installation of micro-vegetable gardens in the city’s low-income neighborhoods to improve food security and create income-generating activities for the sale of locally produced fresh vegetables. This Urban Agriculture Programme has spread to 24 districts, 21 traning centers and 15,000 beneficiaries.
Additional special mentions go to the following cities and good practices:
Governance: Ede (Netherlands) for its political commitment to draft and implement an integrated food governance framework
Sustainable diets and nutrition: Copenhagen (Denmark) for its organic conversion project
Social and economic equity: Austin (USA) for its Healthy Food Access Initiative
Food production: Dakar (Senegal) for its Micro-Gardens Project
Food supply and distribution: Ljubljana (Slovenia) for their short food supply chain work
Food waste: Bruges (Belgium) for their innovative approach in reducing food waste in health care centres.

53 practices submitted from 39 cities in 27 countries