Within the next few days- starting from Saturday 12 December 2020, Africas chapters of the Young Professionals for Agricultural Development (YPARD) take up the baton to lead the worldwide forum dubbed the Global YPARD Café (GYC).
The YPARD Café within the YPARD Country Chapters has been a platform for discourse by Young Professionals on key youth issues in sustainable food systems. This has been an engagement, which highlights youths perspectives on the issues as well as the bottlenecks of youths contribution to sustainable food systems within the countries and the way forward. The Global YPARD Café hence is a country-led international forum open to our networks across the globe through onsite and online participation via our social media channels. This is the first-ever YPARD Café with a global scope and it has successfully commenced with our chapters in Europe, Asia and LAC.
Random glimpses of the surge
The GYC as led in Asia by YPARD Armenia promoted modern and clean agriculture and to ensure the sustainable income and financial security of young entrepreneurs. This offered an opportunity for young professionals to develop new skills and capabilities, and to be informed on recent developments for them to remain competitive in their resolve to contribute to sustainable food systems within their scope.
In South America, YPARD Peru generated conversations among young entrepreneurial leaders in the agri-food system. Through these interactions, these young professionals shared their business-related strategies of building resilience and innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic. This also helped the participants identify the way forward for new ways of consumption and future challenges for production.
Similarly, in Europe, YPARD Albanias session churned out approaches to facing pandemics based on lessons learnt from the challenges that young agripreneur participants of the session experienced in the context of the COVID-19 situation. an open discussion will take place between participants with a highlight of best policies and approaches to face pandemics time and lessons learnt from this emerged/ unusually situation.
Watch out for the account on these and other related events on the YPARD website soon.
Relay to YPARD Africa
YPARD Africa is set to run the GYC with a blend of onsite and virtual activities such as panel discussions, experience capitalization, exhibitions of products/ services. These are targeted at young professionals with the sole aim of empowering them to shape food systems under themes of youth mentorship, capacity development, digital innovations, among others. A host of youth leaders of agricultural innovations would be featured to inspire and inform young participants on the way forward in tackling the challenges in the food systems in recent times.
The country chapters slated to lead this engagement are YPARD Benin, YPARD Cameroon, YPARD Nigeria, YPARD Rwanda and YPARD Uganda.
Participation in the Global YPARD Café is open to all members of the YPARD network across the globe; partner youth networks and actors in the agricultural sector; and youth-focused organizations or networks.
For updates on the events, join our Facebook Group pages and follow Twitter pages via the links below:
YPARD Africa: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1825192764394753
YPARD Cameroon: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ypardcameroon
YPARD Nigeria: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ypardnigeria
YPARD Rwanda: https://www.facebook.com/groups/189623046208514/?ref=share
YPARD Uganda: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1036838579671114
Twitter Pages: @YpardAfrica, @YPARD_Cameroun, @ypardnigeria, @ypardrwanda, @YPARDUganda
Hashtag: #GYC2020