Middle Tennessee Serves as Epicenter to Address World Hunger
Although the sustainable living movement in Chattanooga may feel like small seismic shifts to us here when compared to innovative sustainable living cultures like those found in California, Washington and Oregon, there is an undercurrent here in Middle Tennessee for global sustainability far greater than any of us may imagine.
Just a few hours Northeast of us, a small town called Lebanon Tennessee will host a global summit this November at Cumberland University as the kickoff to a three-year sustainable project aimed at bringing together world leaders, educators, innovators and scientists to collaborate and address the issue of world hunger and global health care in a sustainable manner. Cumberland University and two of its key leaders, are the visionaries behind a development center here that links innovation strategy with the region’s greatest competitive assets – its universities. These leaders are also the visionaries and catalysts behind the Global South Summit 2012.
Dr. Harvill Eaton, President of Cumberland University, and Dr. Scott T. Massey, one of the country’s foremost regional economic strategists created and champion The Cumberland Center as a university-based business alliance focused on innovation and prosperity in Middle Tennessee and the state. The mission of the Cumberland Center is to compete globally by advancing innovation and prosperity in Middle Tennessee through targeted university-business engagement and enterprise creation. Tennessee is a state rich with natural beauty and resources, strong agriculture, and a proliferation of outstanding universities in a highly concentrated area, where humanities and research are core to curriculum. It is a natural fit that a region so rich in resources would lead the way in critical humanitarian efforts like global hunger and health care.
The Global South Summit 2012 sits at the core of the initiative, and will feature discussion panels on topics such as International Perspectives on Health, Food, and Sustainability, Transforming Healthcare: How Collaboration and IT Create Game-Changing Innovation, Feeding the Planet: Where do we stand today?, Growing Abundant Food and From Harvest to Table: Preservation, Logistics, and Distribution. Summit discussion leaders from renowned organizations like The National Institute for Health, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, World Bank, The Global Harvest Initiative, Stanford University, Vanderbilt University and University of Texas, and leaders from Coca Cola and Sysco Systems are just a few of the key participants that will lead discussions live and via video conference. The 2012 Global South Summit takes place November 13 and 14th, and will serve as the formative serves as the formative Global Food Summit to set the agenda for the Sustainable Food Project, Expo Milano 2015.
