The combined agricultural and food sector accounts today for 30 million jobs (13.4% of total employment) and for 3.5% of total Gross Value Added in the EU-28 (Eurostat 2014). In 2012, the European Economic and Social Committee of European Union contemplated that regional food value chains and cross-sectoral fertilisation of productive processes have a strong impact on local development. Several initiatives and projects carried out at local and regional level, confirm the huge potential of food to contribute to job creation, social well-being, and cultural and health commodity. Food tourism strategies are significant instruments of regional development, particularly because of the potential leverage between products from the two sectors (Hall and al. 2005), and consequently significant sectors for new enterprises creation and increased job offers. Food is also part of the immaterial cultural heritage, as stated by the WTO (2012), as embedded in local identities of destinations. In spite of high potential and running policies to enhance food tourism, implementation face major problems, such as difficult dialogue among heterogeneous stakeholders, which often have very different set of values and interests; lack of training and business planning, due to limited time, finances, personnel, skills, and experience of food producers and local touristic players (Verbole 2003; Saxena et al. 2007); high skills mismatch between graduates in related subjects and the sector needs.In the frame of a socioecological approach, that is particularly relevant in sectors where the environment and the strength of communities play a key role for local development, higher education institutions could initiate and favour processes of community learning, in particular by focusing on the role of students. Higher education students could be key players of innovation, and key mediators between research, business, and local development: they represent the educated workforce of the future, and to be employable and active contributors of economy, they should acquire skills that are relevant to the labour market. However, in addition to what the universities are used to do (courses on soft skills, career development support and career guidance, entrepreneurship courses etc.), they need to know, understand and be aware of contexts and communities in which they live. Professional network building is also very important, and should be pursued since the study years. On the basis of these considerations, the project implemented a series of learning and networking activities putting the student in the centre of the action. By using participatory approaches, the project has organised workshops, seminars, learning events in order to support co-creation processes of local development in which the students had an active role.At the end of the project in October 2019, informal networks acting as learning communities have been established in the areas of the universities of the consortium. Working to that aim, the project has produced and validated tools and materials, that can support other universities, companies, policy makers and other stakeholders in the field of food and gastronomy, to increase their regional dimension to support both local development and students employability. All project outputs are freely accessible from the project website and the learning platform of the FOODBIZ project, and published with open licenses.