Concept Paper: 'Facilitating Sustainable Change: Solomon Islands Youth Project' (original) (raw)
Related papers
2011
Some countries in the Caribbean have initiated youth oriented projects to address their aging farming population while others are developing policies to encourage youth to pursue a career in food production. A study conducted among 109 students of agriculture (56% female:44% male) at the secondary level in St. Vincent and the Grenadines sought to determine students' perceptions of the incentives and disincentives to pursuing a career in food production, the likelihood that they will engage in farming in the near future and their preferred areas of food production. A close ended, self reporting survey instrument was used to collect data. Results indicated that income generation, changing the nature of farming in SVG and studying agricultural science in school were the top ranked reasons for considering a future in agriculture. The highest ranked disincentives were lack of government support, the costs of starting up an enterprise and lack of local agricultural training opportunit...
Engaging Youth for Sustainable Development: Field Lessons from Community Sustainability Global
Proceedings of the International Conference on Sustainable Development, 2020
We ask what youth could do to enhance the three pillars of SD across the global north and south. We use an international project, Community Sustainability Global (CSG), as a case study to answer the question, drawing on workshop preparation and interaction, feedback surveys and interviews. Among other findings, our results show that youth contribute not only to promoting SD policy and action but could also tell us more about knowledge mobilization on scientific and policy loopholes.
Technium Social Sciences Journal, 2020
For sustainable development and meaningful changes in society, the use of human energy is a must. In the question of the use of human energy one-third of human energy is untapped or not addressed properly and this constitutes the youth. However, to utilize these very human energies there is a need for policy, education, training, participation, equitable access to resources, and process of empowerment. And for the optimum utilization of youth energy, the diversity & complexity of the issue need to be understood from a holistic perspective. The main objective of this paper is to look for ways and means of youth empowerment and community development. The methods used in this research are descriptive surveys, observation, personal interviews, and focus group discussions (FGD).
Sustainability, Agri, Food and Environmental Research, 2019
Agricultural education play a central role in disseminating knowledge, skills and attitudes toward managing environmental resources which support food productivity. Its goals are basically achieved through formal education. Hitherto, youths have been involved in environmental stress mitigation efforts both at the school and community levels but are still short of adequate knowledge. Current trends of environmental stress and its associative impact on the food growing soils and space call for its integration into agricultural education programme. This paper identifies mechanisms for ensuring Food Security (FS) and Sustainable Environment (SE) through Youths’ Agricultural Education. First, the paper discussed the concepts of sustainability as it affects the environment and food security. It also discussed constraints of FS and SE. Mechanisms discussed includes: curriculum content review and update, adequate funding by government, training and retraining of manpower, and involvement of...
Rainwater harvesting presents a viable option for securing water availability in order to increase food production. The study focuses on rural youth in Luphisi and Dwaleni villages in the Mpumalanga Province and considers the relationship between youth capabilities and food security. The study uses qualitative data collected from focus group discussions and quantitative data from a baseline survey within the context of an integrated rainwater harvesting project. The indicators tapped into attributes related to trust, social cohesion, inclusion and sociability, and examined these within the context of the ‘capability approach’, to consider whether and in what ways these attributes can be linked to food security. Results show that youth have high levels of certain capabilities such as trust, social cohesion and inclusion, co-operation, self-esteem, and meaning. However, in other dimensions there are fewer opportunities, like access to networks, access to knowledge and information and sociability, which are lacking among youth and restrict opportunities for them to engage with issues around food and water security. The Chi-square test was used to investigate the relationship between youth capabilities and food security and at p<0.05 results showed that there was no relationship between youth capabilities and food security in Dwaleni. There were however three capabilities showing significant statistical relationships between youth capabilities and food security in Luphisi: collective action and co-operation, social cohesion and self-esteem. We argue that there are opportunities to build on existing capabilities and that, overall, the potential of youth for engaging in water resources management is not being tapped into. Keywords: collective action, food security, water resources management, rainwater harvesting, self-esteem, social cohesion, trust, youth
This article describes a sustainable agriculture workshop designed and led by Master's students to support university-community engagement in Costa Rica. Our project had three transformative goals: 1) to empower Master's students as educators, 2) to share food security knowledge with community youth, and 3) to strengthen our university-community relationships for knowledge dissemination. For other scholars who wish to apply principles from our Master's student-led workshop within their local context, we describe our recommendations as well as areas for improvement regarding our three goals. Despite our workshop successes, it was a volunteer project that competed with the academic workloads of the students and the professor. We suggest that community engagement form part of regular academic obligations and courses to increase its accessibility and to provide more opportunities for Master's students to transition into educators and practitioners before entering their fields of work.
Food security and sustainability: exploring Japanese youth participation in agriculture
Food Research, 2020
There are many challenges in assuring the sustainability of food supply in the context of expanding Japanese population. Insufficient participation of Japanese youth in the agricultural industry is among the issues in food sustainability which has prompted the Japanese government to ensure more youth engagement in the sector for its continuity. The youth are considered as vanguards who would bring changes in the Japanese agriculture industry as the number of ageing farmers in the country is increasing. In Japan, agriculture is one of the most important industries as it contributes about 1.1% to overall national GDP. Thus, a qualitative study with a phenomenological approach was conducted with 7 Japanese youth who are involved in the agriculture industry in the country to identify their socio-economic characteristics, to determine the factors influencing their participation and the constraints, and to assess the perceptions, perspectives, and understandings of youth towards food secu...
ROLE OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN SUSTAINABLE RURAL DEVELOPMENT
This paper focuses on young people as human resources for sustainable rural development. In order to effectively use their potential, there is a need to provide them with new and better competences, through educational system and multi-sectoral networking. Namely, young people are recognized as one of the "economic capital" in sustainable agricultural and rural development. In 1992, the Republic of Croatia supported Agenda 21 (UN, Conference in RIO) and determined the development based on the concept of sustainability. Education is recognized as a key for the achievement of sustainable development. According to OECD criterion, 91,6% of Croatian territory is rural and 47,6% of the total population lives in rural areas. Croatia is implementing EU's Common Agricultural Policy as a member of European Union. It promotes sustainable rural development through diversification of the rural economy, integration of all relevant rural sectors and empowered local key stakeholders. Faculty of Agriculture in Osijek developed three projects focused on young people, two are already implemented under IPA EU fund, that are contributing to sustainable rural development by introducing its principles to VET education, creation on new lifelong learning programmes and master studies. This paper will present some of the experience gained through their implementation