The Webinar ‘Good Food For All – A Conversation with Youth Leaders’ took place on 11 August – the eve of International Youth Day – and was hosted by the SDG2 Advocacy Hub. It featured a discussion between youth leaders and food systems experts on the role and vision of youth in transforming food systems and ensuring Good Food For All, building up to the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit. Please find information about the discussion and the speakers below.
Florence Sibomana (Rwanda)
Florence Sibomana is a medical doctor from Rwanda, passionate about global health and social justice. She volunteers with the Rwanda Non-Communicable Disease Alliance, and Amazon NutritionCabinet. Florence has undertaken advocacy work with the Medical Students Association of Rwanda and is a peer educator on sexual and reproductive health issues; in 2015 she coordinated events for World Aids Day. She is also the vice coordinator for the Rwanda village community promoter team with whom she is an advocate for social justice working with underprivileged communities from rural areas. She is a student Ambassador at Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and a former Youth Leader for Nutrition Representative at the UNGA 2018.
Lana Weidgenant (US/Brazil)
Lana is a climate and food systems activist from Brazil, attending John Hopkins University. She is the Deputy Director of Partnerships at the International youth climate organisation Zero Hour, and is also involved in food systems as an organizer in the Youth Climate Save Movement to address food systems in climate action.She is the co-founder of youth-focused organization Cultivate America for food systems solutions to climate, and an Advisory Board Member at Plant Dining Partnerships. Lana has led successful campaigns to bring plant-based options to 18,000 locations in North America and spoke at UN Headquarters on the International Day of Peace about food systems change as global solutions.
Brian Bosire (Kenya)
Brian is the founder of UjuziKilimo, a data driven agricultural services company that uses innovative data acquisition technologies and a comprehensive database to collect and analyze farm data to help farmers and agriculture players make better decisions and build targeted services.
Pramisha Thapaliya (Nepal)
Pramisha Thapaliya, from Nepal, is an advocate for climate justice and sustainable food systems. She works as an agriculture Instructor of a government-based school and has started a School Outreach project at her own school.She is the coordinator of the U.N. YOUNGO Agriculture Working Group and through writing articles and talking in various forums, Pramisha is advocating for the importance of sustainable and plant-based diets.
Dr Agnes Kalibata, 2021 UNFSS Special Envoy
Dr Kanayo F. Nwanze, CGIAR Special Representative to UNFSS
Dr. Kalibata outlined that youth will have the opportunity to engage in the UN Food Systems Summit in four ways:
1) Each of the five action tracks of the summit will include a youth network and one of the vice chairs of the tracks will be a young person.
2) A Food Systems Dialogue will happen at country level, recognising that food systems are local to each country. Dr. Kalibata would like to see young people participate in this dialogue in each country.
3) The UNFSS has a Championship Network and wants to ensure that youth are part of this network. The goal is to build a youth movement within this network.
4) The Open Dialogue System, an internet based platform, gives anyone the opportunity to feed in ideas and give feedback online, without having to be part of a network.
Lana:
Brian:
Florence:
Pramisha:
Ownership of food systems from corporations to farmers and especially bringing smallholder farmers as a main driver of food systems in developing and least developed countries as well as large scale farmers where it is applied (Transforming our current "Money oriented food systems" to "People and planet oriented food systems").
Prioritising local and diversified food systems.
Promoting climate-friendly production practices and focusing on building local technologies keeping in view of the traditional and indigenous knowledge (E.g.: Discouraging excessive use of chemicals in soil, shortening transportation route, healthy packaging, less processing, reducing food waste, passing regulations and laws to ban supermarkets from throwing away or destroying unsold food Instead, force them to donate surplus food to charities and food banks. Simultaneously supporting structures to safe food and make it accessible by the ones who need it the most).