John Keells Foundation (JKF) recently launched a campaign to support small entrepreneurs in street food and catering services as part of John Keells Praja Shakthi initiative in Colombo 02, a location which has a long history of street food culture.

Branded as #KeepItSafe, the Campaign focuses on Food Safety and Hygiene as a key to enhancing market demand and income levels of food entrepreneurs. While the requirement for training and capacity development was identified at a forum with the food entrepreneurs held on 25th February, the campaign was launched to coincide with the World Food Safety Day commemorated on 7th June 2020 to draw attention and inspire action to help prevent, detect and manage foodborne risks, contribute to food security, human health, economic prosperity, market access and sustainable development. Due to COVID-related restrictions in conducting onsite training, video clips on aspects of food safety and hygiene were developed by JKF with the support of Chefs of Cinnamon Hotels and Resorts and shared with identified groups of food entrepreneurs during the months of June and July.

Users have shared positive feedback such as follows:

“This is a very useful video, Thank you for sharing” and “මෙය ඉතා වටිනා වීඩියෝවකි. ව්‍යාපාර සදහා පමණක් නොව අප මුළුතැන්ගේටද ඉතා සුදුසු උපදෙස් දුන්නට බොහොම ස්තුති.”

JKF plans to continue capacity building and livelihood support for this group of entrepreneurs through future programs customized to relate to the post-COVID environment.