Setting the scene Between 16 and 20 Young people present flesh&bones at GCARD2 YPARD pre-event session. Some of them leave shortly to pop-up in other pre-event sessions related to their field of expertise or regional activities. Many of them are also GCARD2 Social reporting trainees. Laptop in hands, they replace the traditional note-taking to tweeting! So, to this bunch of YPs,... Continue reading

“Agriculture is an ageing and undervalued profession in many countries and special attention must be given to encouraging young people into careers in all aspects of AR4D...It is important that young people themselves help express what changes are needed in agricultural education and incentives to make careers more attractive and valued and better recognize the range of roles now required in... Continue reading

The 3rd RUFORUM Biennial Conference was held, last September, 24-28, 2012, in Entebbe, Uganda. The objective of this meeting was to exchange findings and experiences, and indentify lessons learned in order to improve universities performance for agricultural development. Mary Ebukalin was invited to share her experience and insight, as an end-user, on the impact of higher education on agricultural development. Mary... Continue reading

The state of "Foresight" Foresight (ability to explore/anticipate and plan the future) is considered essential for understanding future agricultural and rural development contexts and changes around the world, and for driving the research and innovation required to meet these needs.  An inventory of forward looking anticipatory works was conducted earlier this year by GFAR, the Global Forum on Agricultural Research. A... Continue reading

The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) is - in short - a network of 29 universities in eastern and southern Africa working with other partners, to enhance high education quality and impact in the field of agriculture. YPARD was invited at the 3rd RUFORUM Biennial Conference, last September, 24-28, 2012, in Entebbe, Uganda. The objective of this... Continue reading

It has been a long journey since we started preparing Youth involvement into GCARD2 (the 2nd Global Conference for Agricultural Research for Development). There is still a long way to go : GCARD2 being a huge event and hopefully the starting point of new exciting projects. Here is a small brief on the distance run so far, and the up-coming GCARD2... Continue reading

A platform for the youth to emerge as leaders in the direction of green economy, the five-day Asia Pacific Graduates´ Youth Forum on Green Economy successfully concluded on 29 September 2012, in Kathmandu, Nepal, where young graduates from 15 different countries and more than 40 participants were gathered together. This meeting was fruitful to give elicit notion to participation of regional youth... Continue reading

September 2012 welcomed 2 new YPARD country representatives in Europe!  Johanna Gysin is our new YPARD Switzerland representative !  You bet Johanna is passionate about agriculture and Asia ! Johanna is currently enrolled in a part time master studies at the School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences (HAFL) in Zollikofen, Switzerland, with a major in Management of Value Chains. Her... Continue reading

September 2012 welcomed 2 new YPARD country representatives in Europe!  Myriam Perez Dumoulin is our new YPARD France representative !  After a short mission in summer 2011 where she performed an employability assignment commissioned by the AgrisMundus master of sciences Secretariat, she has now returned to Montpellier SupAgro to another exciting project in contact with foreign students of agricultural engineering. Myriam... Continue reading

Last week, five days long session on “Asia Pacific Graduates’ Youth Forum on Green Economy, 25-29 September, 2012” were held where 40 participants from 15 countries with diverse background were gathered together in Kathmandu, capital city of Nepal to emerge as leaders in the direction of green economy. In the third day of session, we got chance to meet with Mr.... Continue reading

“The conference "New skills for a European Bioeconomy" hosted by the European Commission in Brussels on 20-21 November 2012 will bring together bioeconomy stakeholders at the European, national and regional level and also those active in the education and training sectors to discuss the role of skills development in driving and facilitating the transition towards a bioeconomy and seizing the employment... Continue reading

Dear YPARDians,  As food prices soar and, according to the World Population Prospects that the UN published in 2010, we will be 9.3 billion souls living on earth by 2050 (10.1 billion by the end of the century), it is time to set out on a journey to find the best solutions in order to ensure GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY.  At this... Continue reading

Youth at FANRPAN Regional Dialogue (2011) Photo Courtesy: FANRPAN The Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), in collaboration with the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA) commissioned 6 Country Case Studies (Malawi, Mauritius, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe) in November 2011 on current and emerging youth policies and initiatives with a special focus on links... Continue reading

Bring out the voice of the youth on several issues related to capacity development in agricultural research for development. Join one of three online groups according to your topic of interest, and share your ideas on youth engagement, from Monday 3 September until 14 September 2012: Agricultural innovation systems -> What are steps towards greater engagement with youth to create stronger... Continue reading

YPARD were Promoted in Yunan, Shanxi and Hebei Province in China by chance of the project of field survey in remote and poverty villages My dear YPARD China team members and I are all doing our jobs on a project of field survey in remote and poverty villages in China these months.  Before the actual field survey, we went to the... Continue reading

YPARD Steering Committee welcomes on board Femke Van der lee, an enthusiast and bright young woman from the Netherlands, interested in agricultural and environmental concerns in developing countries.Her interest for agricultural research and development grew during her study in International Development at Wageningen University. She specialised in rural development sociology and did an internship in Cuba where she worked and lived... Continue reading

We are moving onto the second and final phase of the YPARD Seeing Thoughts video contest : elaborating documentaries. YPARD Seeing Thoughts video competition is an attempt to capture and showcase the voices of youth and their contribution to agriculture for development, whether in research, in production or assisting a community to develop a sustainable livelihood. The project was divided into... Continue reading

Tell us about your partnership initiatives for youth inclusion for agricultural development!On August 12, we will be celebrating the Youth on International Youth Day. The assigned theme for 2012 is: Building a Better World: Partnering with Youth, meant to celebrate and solicit action together with and for the youth!Initiated by the UN Secretary-General, this event encourages for multiple stakeholders to discuss... Continue reading

              The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA) in collaboration with the Faculty of Agriculture (University of Mauritius) and the Food and Agricultural Research Council (FARC) organised a workshop on Web 2.0 Learning Opportunity in Mauritius from 9-13 July 2012 at the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Mauritius, Reduit. I was invited... Continue reading

As the academic year draw to an end at Njala University, the newly founded YPARD Sierra Leone local working group members have volunteered to create further sensitization in their various communities while on vacation. Statistics from our last meetings held on the 27th of June 2012 at Sierra Leone’s National Agricultural Training Centre (NATC) and on the 28th of June 2012... Continue reading