Writer: Emmett McMenamy
Olivia Marti (pictured) was just 18 when she packed her bags for El Batan, just east of Mexico City. The Waukon native was heading to a fully funded internship at an agriscience center that focuses on improving corn, wheat and other grains.
“It was incredibly transformative, especially coming from a rural part of Iowa,” she said. “It really opened my eyes to what I wanted to do in agriculture.”
Marti is now studying agronomy and agricultural business at Iowa State University, thanks in part to that stint in Mexico. The Borlaug-Ruan International Internships are just one of several youth programs offered by the World Food Prize Foundation, along with the Youth Institute and Global Youth Institute, as well as the Wallace-Carver Fellowships with the U.S Department of Agriculture.
To date, nearly 90,000 young people have participated in these World Food Prize programs since they began in 1994.
“It’s so important to prepare students to tackle the issues of tomorrow,” World Food Prize Chief Operating Officer Mashal Husain said. “Unless they are made aware of the issues and are included as part of the conversation, how will they tackle those issues 20 years from now?”
The foundation’s original youth outreach program is the Global Youth Institute, which gave 14 Iowa high school students a chance to interact with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug and former President Jimmy Carter. Over the years, the program has expanded to 20 states and six countries, where participants research a particular country and write a paper about its food-production potential. The students present and receive feedback from experts, who send more than 175 qualifying participants to an annual gathering every October in Des Moines.
“We wanted to inspire the next generation to take on the greatest challenge in human history,” WFP President Emeritus Kenneth Quinn said.
The Global Youth Institute gathering in Des Moines coincides with the annual Borlaug Dialogue, the three-day conference for global leaders in food security. Last year’s dialogue convened 1,500 participants from more than 70 countries, including the presidents of Tanzania and Sierra Leone. There, Global Youth Institute participants get a chance to refine and re-present their papers, meet global leaders, visit Kemin Industries and local farms, and learn about real-world strategies for food security.
At last year’s event, which celebrated the youth programs’ 30th anniversary, the World Food Prize released a survey of input and stories from program alumni who now work all over the world.
The survey showed that 92% of alumni learned how to think critically about issues related to global food security. It also found that 79% agree they learned about new career paths by participating in the youth programs.
Like Marti, another Iowa State student named Saum Balaji participated in a Borlaug-Ruan International Internship in Haryana, India, and both institutes. “The Global Youth Institute was my big formative experience,” she said. “It was the big kahuna. It really taught me what I wanted to do with my life.”
Marti and Balaji are just two of the tens of thousands of students who have participated in the World Food Prize programs. But the foundation’s leaders say the numbers are only part of the story. The programs help train the next generation to feed a growing world of more than 8 billion people.
“Every single one of those students counts,” Husain said. “It’s very energizing to know that you have touched the lives of young people and made an impact.”
Iowa Stops Hunger is an ongoing Business Publications Corp. initiative to raise awareness about food insecurity and inspire action to combat it.
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