One of the main recommendations from the SIANI Annual meeting in January 2015 was to identify the ways to involve more youth in the discussion around agricultural development in general and in the SIANI network in particular. This lead to the launch of SIANI #YouthFocus– an initiative dedicated to creation and production of agriculture and food security related communication for the youngest members of the SIANI network.
Finding out what would interest young members of our network most was a natural step of the #YouthFocus development. And so, we designed a survey and conducted a series of in-depth interviews to find out what is on the youth’s mind when we talk about agriculture and food security. We are now glad to present some initial conclusions from this work.
One of the main recommendations from the SIANI Annual meeting in January 2015 was to identify the ways to involve more youth in the discussion around agricultural development in general and in the SIANI network in particular. This lead to the launch of SIANI #YouthFocus– an initiative dedicated to creation and production of agriculture and food security related communication for the youngest members of the SIANI network.
Finding out what would interest young members of our network most was a natural step of the #YouthFocus development. And so, we designed a survey and conducted a series of in-depth interviews to find out what is on the youth’s mind when we talk about agriculture and food security. We are now glad to present some initial conclusions from this work.
It was decided to start the #YouthFocus from targeting the audience based in Sweden and expand the outreach with time. Despite the fact that almost half of the survey respondents are agronomy students at Swedish universities, 4 of 5 had never heard about SIANI before. This indicates that it is not the content of SIANI activities that need to change, but rather the outreach and marketing. Many respondents emphasised the importance of social media and e-mail contact and also noted that placing posters and flyers in universities may attract attention to the network. Another good idea for a more effective outreach is to increase SIANI presence at various student fairs as well as to collaborate more with youth based networks and organisations, such as the student unions.
Read the full news on SIANI's website.