Global Youth Institute 2020
If you’ve been around for awhile now, you are no stranger to the Global Youth Institute and the beloved Missouri Youth Institute. These annual events are very special to me, as the first is where I was introduced to food insecurity and global challenges while in high school, and the latter is my effort to extend the same type of experience to all high school students across Missouri.
This year, like many other events and conferences, the program transpired virtually and hundreds of students worldwide gathered to learn about food insecurity, international agriculture, and building resilience in a food system that has been challenged, torn, and damaged from the pandemic, alongside hundreds of industry professionals, humanitarian leaders, government officials, and nonprofit organizations. The International Borlaug Dialogue, hosted by the World Food Prize Foundation, brings together the leading voices in food security and international agriculture/food to have challenging, action-based dialogue about what can be done to solve international hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and a slew of other challenges.
The 2020 program featured action and outcome-oriented discussion on the topics of:
climate change
finance and investment
nutrition, and
equity and access
My role with this particular Global Youth Institute and Borlaug Dialogue was two-fold; I served as a Group Leader for a student group at GYI and as a Reserve Corps volunteer with WFPF taking notes during the 45+ side events hosted by external organizations, businesses, universities, and nonprofits. Being a Group Leader is an experience I will cherish each year and having the ability to speak to and learn from students from Missouri, California, Mexico, China, and Texas, among other states/countries, was really special and restored faith in the future of the anti-hunger movement.
Being virtual lended itself to a few different experiences that are atypical of an in-person GYI/Borlaug Dialogue, two of which I want to speak on today as they were transformative and have stuck with me now nearly a month after the program concluded. The Laureate Chats and the CEO of Mercy Corps.
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Laureate Chats:
New this year, the World Food Prize Foundation offered students and conference attendees the chance to have small group and 1-on-1 conversations with previous World Food Prize Laureates. Anyone who has attended the World Food Prize knows how famous these people are in the agriculture/food space — you’re starstruck to be in their presence! The opportunity to speak to them in such an intimate setting was truly transformative for me, and I gained so much insight from my two conversations with Catherine Bertini and Howarth Bouis.
Catherine Bertini
Catherine Bertini is a household name in food insecurity work, having led the World Food Programme for ten years. WFP actually received the Nobel Peace Prize this year! She is a powerful advocate for women and girls worldwide and used her World Food Prize $250,000 reward to start the Catherine Bertini Trust Fund for Girls’ Education. Her professional path is a journey that I have certainly eyeballed that aligns with my interests and skillset — she started in corporate public affairs which led to government service, and ultimately the World Food Programme. In her lifetime, Catherine regards reforming WFP as her greatest accomplishment and spoke heavily on the importance of gathering on-the-ground constituent feedback and insight. “You don’t know better and you won’t be effective without their input,” she said. She was instrumental in emphasizing female empowerment in food work and has blazed a trail for other females to follow in her footsteps.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
1. Know where you want to be broadly speaking. For example, Catherine wanted to build services to help the poor which led her to government service and welfare programs at USDA as the Assistant Secretary of Food and Consumer Services. Her experience in corporate public affairs was like “selling”, which was valuable when she had to listen to and incorporate the various needs of constituencies, beneficiaries, and others in work later on in her career.
2. It was lonely sometimes — being the only female in the room/at the table is not a thing of the past.
3. Your career is flexible, more so than previous generations.
4. Don’t stay in a job where you hate it and are under-appreciated.
Howdy Bouis
Ok, I loved Howdy. He told a story about NASA and the moon and how no one thought it could happen and then it did and he teared up and I teared up and it was beautiful. I obviously didn’t tell it as great as he did (lol) but it was a sweet, sincere moment of how big accomplishments can transform us all to believe in something bigger. I left this conversation inspired to be a part of that change, a part of something that transforms what people believe to be possible.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
1. Never give up. Howdy gave himself 8 years to work on biofortification - and wouldn’t take no as an answer. He ultimately succeeded and was awarded the World Food Prize for biofortification efforts that benefitted, and continue to benefit, millions of people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. His organization HarvestPlus was critical to taking biofortification from an idea to a globally expanding and respected nutrition intervention.
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Tjada McKenna
Another speaker that I really latched onto and enjoyed her message was Tjada McKenna, the new Chief Executive Officer of Mercy Corps.
I recently started a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program at Washington University in St. Louis in this crazy COVID-19 time and I’ve doubted if it’s the right path/if it’s what I want/if I like it, especially in comparison to my peers who may be studying internationally, who received competitive fellowships, have really cool-sounding majors, what have you. This talk was actually the opener to the Global Youth Institute and it was the perfect conversation to kick things off. I left feeling energized about what I am doing and in a time of disappointment, a lot of “no” responses, and just bleh~, it was incredibly powerful.
Tjada worked for a consulting firm right out of undergrad, where she worked on agriculture clients on issues connected to development, seed, and market entries.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
1. “I think I let my head get ahead of my heart.” I loved her honesty with this. She mentioned how she pursued other work or other industries, but felt happiest doing agriculture work. In her MBA program, a lot of others were chasing money — and I think that route is incredibly tempting. Tjada spoke about how people in her program and otherwise envy that she is doing work that matters. that truth bomb really stuck with me because I want, more than anything else, to work that fundamentally matters and that makes success less determinant on where you come from, where you were born, and what resources are available to you. There is no linear path, and everything Tjada McKenna shared with the group really uplifted the importance of impact.
2. Food security is connected to everything else.
3. It weakens us as communities when we allow any inequalities to exist. Improved equity and access was a theme of the discussion at the International Borlaug Dialogue and Tjada spoke to the importance of applying Norman Borlaug’s famous quote ‘take it to the farmer’ to truly take it to ALL farmers. “You can’t be with us without us,” she said. Listening, understanding, seeking input from the people - that’s critical.
4. THINK BIG AND BOLD. “I questioned if there was a place for me,” she said. “There is.” *snaps to that.