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World Food Forum: #YouthLead Innovation Festival Takes a Youth-Led Approach to Transform Food Systems
On 13 August 2021 from 9:30 to 10:30 EST, the World Food Forum (WFF), in collaboration with the UN Secretary-General's Envoy on Youth, the Food Systems Summit, The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Thought for Food, will host a youth-inclusive Food Security Session as part of the #YouthLead Innovation Festival.
The Food Security Session aims to engage, empower and give voice to young people as an integral and equal part of the process to shape the future of food security.
The session will open with a keynote speech from Máximo Torero, Chief Economist, and Youth Committee Chair at FAO. It will then highlight some of youth’s top concerns related to agri-food systems, based on the youth-led consultation that was hosted by the Food Systems Pre-Summit and WFF in July, and present youth-led solutions to food system challenges from young entrepreneurs around the world. Following the presentations, participants will reflect on some of the proposed solutions from WFF’s partner organization Extreme Tech Challenge. A multi-stakeholder discussion on the development and implementation of a youth-led approach to transform agri-food systems will follow.
The youth-initiatives highlighted during the session will be drawn from a shortlist of nominated enterprises that includes: Indigikitchen, an online cooking show dedicated to re-indigenizing our diets using digital media; Alley Capital Group, a young smart agriculture and engineering company offering crop protection services; Foodovation trading as Artisanal Foods, a food manufacturing company that specializes in the value addition of local ingredients in Zimbabwe; Spiral Farm House, a social enterprise in Nepal empowering local farmers to go fully organic; and Hillsbazar, an e-commerce platform promoting products from the hillsides of Bangladesh through innovative manufacturing, marketing and logistics.
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About the #YouthLead Innovation Festival The #YouthLead Innovation Festival, which will take place on 12-13August 2021 during International Youth Day, is a celebration of innovative youth-led solutions for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and recovery from COVID-19 pandemic. The Festival is a strategic and timely approach to drive our world towards a solutions-oriented future through youth-led innovation as it brings together young innovators and solutions-makers together with United Nations offices, policy-makers and industry leaders. The event presents opportunities for multi-stakeholder dialogue and collaboration for the use of innovation and technology, and also aims to address the fact that despite the growth of digital technology and innovation, many young innovators from vulnerable and marginalized communities are still left behind. Over the course of the two days, the Festival will feature sessions focused on six thematic tracks, including: Health and Wellbeing, Climate Action and Biodiversity, Economic Empowerment and Employment, Digital Technology, Food Security, and Education.
About World Food Forum The World Food Forum is an independent global network of partners, created for and led by youth, to spark a movement to transform our agri-food systems and achieve the SDGs, including “Zero Hunger”. Conceived by the Youth Committee of the FAO in 2020, and aligning with the core principles of the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit, the WFF aims to serve as the premier platform to engage and harness the passion of youth, galvanizing action and identifying solutions to the growing challenges facing our agri-food systems.
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