The first “Good Food Festival and Entrepreneur Exchange” program organized to coincide with the ‘Nutrition Month’ in Sri Lanka, combines nutrition promotion with small enterprise development and reconciliation to serve the public a unique culinary, cultural, educational and entertaining experience. It was held at the Green Path, Colombo on 27^th and 28^th of June 2015.

This program incorporated three nationally relevant themes; Nutrition promotion (by creating awareness on the importance of nutrition, promoting local producers and suppliers of safe, nutritious food and demonstrating convenient ways of preparing healthy traditional food to suit today’s busy life style), Local Enterprise Promotion (by promoting northern entrepreneurs to establish business linkages with markets in Colombo and other regions, promoting local agricultural produce and small farmers and creating awareness about Northern products and suppliers) and Reconciliation (by building inter regional and inter ethnic economic and social relationships and promote cultural exchanges between participants from different regions in Sri Lanka.)

FAO took part in this event by taking up two stalls. One was occupied by Groundnut vendors both from Killinochchi and Mullaitivu and the other stall was divided between a traditional rice vendor from Anuradhapura and FAO staff promoting FAO visibility through a small quiz program. Both vendors gained income and experience through this event as it was a platform for them to market their products to the Colombo city consumers. FAO staff volunteered to man the stall and conduct a small quiz. The purpose of this quiz was to raise awareness on the mandate of FAO and also on the importance of good nutrition. Since some people at this forum were unaware of the work that FAO does, a small brochure was printed in all 3 languages (English, Sinhala and Tamil) and distributed to help the public in answering the questions. All in all this event not only helped to add visbility to FAO but also to assist vendors from rural areas to market their products in Colombo.