Growing together: me, YPARD and CGIAR

At the occasion of YPARD 10 years, Nadia Manning-Thomas, Partnerships Manager at the CGIAR System Management Office, reflects on herself and the role of YPARD and CGIAR in growing talents.

I am delighted to contribute to the one-year-long celebrations of 10 years of YPARD through this blog piece in which I reflect on how I, CGIAR and YPARD have-together- all grown over this time.

Growing Talents

A few years ago, I worked on an initiative started by the then CGIAR system-wide program on Information Communication Technology and Knowledge Management (ICT-KM) called ‘Growing Talents’: Youth in Agriculture. The initiative was launched as part of the  United Nations’ International Year of Youth in 2010 and  as a way of recognising the achievements, opportunities and challenges of youth within agriculture.  

As part of that initiative a blog series was used to capture and showcase the perceptions, lessons and aspirations of various young professionals and organisations supporting them across the agricultural sector. The second blog in this series was an interview with me, and themed around ‘youth making agricultural knowledge travel’. This blog post outlined the work I was doing, how I felt as a young person working in agriculture and within CGIAR, and my relationship with YPARD. So I thought I would, following good research practice, use this as a kind of baseline to look at how I have grown, how CGIAR has grown, and how YPARD has grown between that blog post and this one and encourage us all to keep growing talents!

I am still a growing talent!

Since 2010 I have grown from a junior position working on knowledge sharing in one of the CGIAR Centers to now being the Partnerships Manager at the CGIAR System Management Office. This growth was supported by the many opportunities I have had over the years that helped me to increase my knowledge, experience and confidence. 

In fact, some of these opportunities have come through working with YPARD.  An example of this was my first interaction with YPARD when I was nominated to sit on its Steering Committee, as a representative from CGIAR, which as I chronicle in my blog post was

“… the first time I’ve been on a steering committee, so it has been a real learning curve. I never thought I would have had such an opportunity at my age, so this experience has been invaluable. I’ve increased my own skills while expanding my professional network.”

And I have now sat on and even lead various steering committees, most recently for the third Global Conference on Agriculture Research and Development (GCARD3), in which youth was given a very prominent position in the GCARD3 global conference.

In my blog piece in 2010 I also talked about:

“The voices of young scientists in the CGIAR, my own included, are not always being heard,” she explains. “I’ve sometimes felt hesitant about putting up my hand or saying something or being chosen to have a more direct role in meetings. I’ve worked hard to give myself more confidence to overcome that. In that regard, YPARD is trying to partner with other groups to give training in leadership and presentation skills, while exploring other training avenues that can benefit young people.”

I find myself now in a better position for my voice to be heard, for my opinion to be taken on board, and to be able to provide strong influence particularly in the way that CGIAR follows its impact pathway towards development outcomes. I was given opportunities for this, including through projects, events and processes I have worked on with YPARD as it worked to provide its members opportunities to be involved and have a voice. And now- although I am still a young person by YPARD definitions- I find myself playing the role of a Senior Advisor from the CGIAR System Management Office within YPARD, and hope to push for more opportunities for other young people to be involved and have a voice.

And I am still growing. I appreciate having mentors in my work place to support me as I build up the skills and experiences necessary to improve my current work tasks and to advance in my career. I strongly believe that mentorship is invaluable to young people, so am very happy to see that mentoring has also become a key activity of YPARD.

YPARD’s growth in growing talents

My trajectory matches that of YPARD, and the trajectory it tries to provide to many young professionals in its network. By providing opportunities to be involved, to be exposed, to learn, and to meet others, YPARD provides valuable capacities and experiences as the necessary building blocks for all young people to grow. So I congratulate YPARD on its efforts and successes to empower young professionals across the agricultural and development sectors—I am a product of it.

And its efforts to get youth involved and have a voice have grown too. In my blog post in 2010 I highlighted that:

“We’ve also fought hard to secure a certain number of places and funding for young professionals at some of the big conferences. For example, in 2009, we advocated for one young professional from each CGIAR Center to be funded to attend the CGIAR Science Forum in the Netherlands.  Each of the young professionals was required to actively participate during these sessions.”

We can chart the growth from this early example through looking at YPARD’s involvement with big events such as the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) held at the time of the Climate Change Conference of the Parties where it started with organising a youth panel  in a side event in Warsaw (COP19) and has grown to organising a whole dedicated session featuring a Dragon’s Den in Paris (COP21).

YPARD has also continued to explore its niche and possibilities for contribution within the agricultural development arena. In addition to a focus on current young professionals, YPARD has oriented itself to be a player in the growing movement to better understand and design relevant interventions to alleviate the huge youth and employment challenge that is looming. It has worked closely with the CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Systems in the development of its Youth Strategy, which aims to 

“engage youth in creating their future in agriculture by benefiting from dynamic, innovative agricultural development processes that enhance young women and men’s access to, and control of, agricultural assets, technologies, services, products and income, and decision-making power in dryland livelihood systems; thereby improving the status, influence, and commitment of young farmers, agro-entrepreneurs, and professionals to develop profitable farm, agriculture-related and agro-processing enterprises, as well as service enterprises that are environmentally and economically sustainable and socially just.”

CGIAR’s focus on youth has grown too!

I have been working with CGIAR in various capacities over the past 11 years and have seen this organisation grow as well. CGIAR has grown in its support to youth to have a voice and in providing opportunities for youth to develop their capacity. We have seen individual efforts by CGIAR Centers and CGIAR Research Programs to formalise an approach to youth such as the Youth Agripreneur Program supported by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA)  and the Youth Strategy of the CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Systems . And now we see the focus on youth has grown in importance for the CGIAR system as a whole too. 

In its Strategy and Results Framework 2016-2030, there is a greater recognition and focus on youth. In describing what it is doing differently, the SRF highlights that CGIAR will be ‘emphasising entrepreneurship and innovation along the agri-food supply chain to provide major opportunities for youth employment.’ Youth, together with gender, has been articulated as a key cross-cutting issue which cuts across the whole research agenda.  As a cross-cutting issue the SRF recognises that 

‘the needs of young people must also be taken into account. Prioritizing rural and food sector entrepreneurship along agri-food supply chains will provide major opportunities for youth employment’. 

The second generation of CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs) were asked to propose how they would tackle this topic and we are seeing some interesting thoughts and activities emerging on youth across the 2nd phase portfolio. Some of the programs are developing a research agenda on youth issues including key research questions, youth-responsive tools and age-disaggregated data, and some indicating that they will be exploring the role of youth along a value chain or a whole impact pathway. Some focus on increasing youth employment opportunities in private and public sectors, while others want to ensure that youth benefit from interventions developed from the program itself. Still, others look at how to develop the capacity of youth.  While the programs vary currently in how they address the topic of youth, what unites them is that they all have a strategy on how to tackle the topic of youth.

So as we look back over the past ten years and celebrate the growth of YPARD and others around it, we must make sure to use the lessons and achievements to fuel a further growth spurt in the area of youth in agriculture and development. Let’s keep growing!

Celebrate YPARD 10 years with us; stay tuned at www.ypard.net/10years

Photo 1 credit: Neil Palmer/Flickr