Innovative Ideas to Feed the World
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“This event brings in three important ideas: young professionals – innovative ideas – feeding the world. These are three ideas that are not always connected. The biggest contribution you can give is to bring them together”, said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.
“Five top project proposals were selected from among 25 entries in a competition involving young professionals from the three Rome-based agencies. They included interns, volunteers, Associate Professional Officers and Staff working in different technical areas in the three UN agencies”, said Cyntia Lima one of the group of young professionals who had spearheaded and organized the Conference. In selecting the projects, a committee composed of representatives of FAO, IFAD ,WFP, the Young Professionals Platform for Agricultural Research for Development (YPARD) and academia made their choice of the best five based on the criteria of innovation; impact and potential for adoption of the 25 project proposals submitted. The five winning projects and their presenters were:
One of the project winners, Syed Fawad Raza, from the WFP office in Pakistan, in a message to the Conference, said that he had been looking for a way of monitoring food prices by linking grocers with price information that was then fed into a database that could be easily accessed by all, by means of an easy-to-use and cost-effective technology. “The one-quarter of food that was produced and went to waste would be sufficient to feed the 870 million undernourished in the world”, said team presenter Daniela Demel referring to the prize winning Save Food, Safe Future project. Thus the project proposal considered how to encourage sustainable food consumption by raising consumer awareness about food consumption and avoidance of waste. Amir Abdullah,WFP Deputy-Executive Director noted that two of the five projects focused on the development of new applications and technologies while another two of the five proposals were concerned with the common theme of food waste. Young people thus had a very topical, innovative and practical approach to ending hunger. The five speakers selected also received congratulatory letters from the FAO Director-General, José Graziano da Silva. The Conference was attended by young professionals from the three Rome-based agencies, Tulane University’s Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy (USA) and University of Erlangen Nuremberg (Germany). Opening remarks were made by FAO Director-General, José Graziano da Silva. Statements were also made by Conference moderator Roxanna Samii, IFAD manager for the Web, Knowledge and internal communications; Arni Mathiesen, Assistant Director-General, Fisheries and Aquaculture Department and Monica Altmaier, Director of Human Resources, FAO. __________________________________________________________________________________ The event was made possible thanks to the support of the Young Professionals’ Forum for International Development (YouFID), the Volunteers and Interns Committee of FAO (VIFAO), the Young Professional’s Platform for Agricultural Research for Development (YPARD) and the Youth and United Nations Global Alliance (YUNGA). __________________________________________________________________________________ Article Source: FAO For more information, please write to [email protected]. Follow the event on Facebook for the latest news. |