YPARD welcomes Keron Bascombe as YPARD Representative for Trinidad and Tobago. Keron Bascombe is a writer, blogger and budding agri journalist from the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Currently he reads for a Msc in Agribusiness and Marketing at the University of the West Indies (UWI). However due to experiencing several other learning environments he is now set on a... More

YPARD is glad to announce the winner of the Seeing Thoughts contest! YPARD Seeing Thoughts video competition launched in 2012 was an attempt to capture and showcase the voices of youth and their contribution to agriculture for development, whether in research, in production or assisting a community to develop a sustainable livelihood. The contest was coupled with a learning process: the... More

YPARD welcomes Olawale Ojo as the New YPARD Representative for Nigeria. You most probably know Olawale already, through YPARD Community Blog and Social Media, where he has been very active. Olawale was one of our “YP of the Month” last year, sharing his success story. He also belonged to the social reporters team at GCARD2; learn more about his experience. Olawale... More

I remember that moment I read Tega’s letter of motivation for YPARD Social Media’s internship position. It smelled creativity, dynamism, smartness and ambition. Tega finished his internship as the New Year 2013 was starting. He contributed to a significant increase of membership on YPARD Pages on social media: Facebook ( page and groupe), Twitter and Linkedin. Tega brought a number of... More

Ado Woldu (Aderajew) is our new YPARD Ethiopia National Representative. Aderajew Woldu is a graduate in Rural Development (B.Sc) from Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia, since 2008. He was employed that same year at Haramaya University as a graduate assistant in the department of Rural Development & Agricultural Extension (RDAE) and carried on as an assistant lecturer, till the end of 2010.... More

Sridhar Gutam is our new YPARD India National Representative. Sridhar Gutam after earning a Ph.D. (Plant Physiology) from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, had joined Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) in 2004. He is currently working as a Senior Scientist (Plant Physiology) at Central Institute for Subtropical Horticulture (CISH), Lucknow. His... More

COP18, the 18th edition of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was taking place from November 26 to December 7, 2012 in Doha, Qatar. Two events were particularly related to agriculture: “Forest day” and “Agriculture, Landscapes and Livelihoods Day”, December 2 and 3, 2012. Agriculture needed to have its space at... More

YPARD is welcoming OBERT MATHIVHA as YPARD South Africa representative. Obert Mathivha grew up in rural areas of South Africa where agricultural activities became part of his upbringing and constituted about 90 percent of his household survival and income. Today, Obert is a legal and diplomatic graduate from the University of Pretoria while his  inherent passion for agriculture made him to... More

Frejus THOTO is our new YPARD Benin National Representative. Frejus Thoto is 22 years old and is about to complete his MSc in Agricultural economics. He got the Certificate of “Science and Policy of Climate Change” from TERI and the World Bank. Frejus is a young expert in climate change adaptation and managed several projects with organization like UNEP, UNDP, IDRC,... More

YPARD is glad to welcome our very first YPARD Nepal representative, Dinesh Panday! Dinesh Panday has a B.Sc. in Agriculture (2011) from the Tribhuvan University (TU), in Nepal. He is currently enrolled as Research Assistant in Soil Science Division of Nepal Agriculture Research Council (NARC), Nepal. His areas of research interest include soil fertility, sustainable soil management and geographical information system... More

We solicited you to integrate COP18 debates related to agriculture some days ago: Youth, agriculture and COP18: Time to engage! We shared a number of hints on  how to get involved from your seat: Youth, agriculture and COP18: HOW to engage NOW! Still not quite clear on what you can do concretely? Still in the phase of letting others speak for... More

YPARD was invited by CTA to participate to its Strategic Youth Stakeholder Workshop from 14th to 16th November 2012 in Wageningen, The Netherlands. A group of around 25 young professionals, coming from Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP), and other partners among which FANRPAN, FAO and IFAD, were gathered – all, working on Youth in Agriculture and Rural Development. CTA workshop’s objective... More

COP18, huge conference on climate change, will kick off from November 26 to December 7, 2012 in Doha, Qatar. Two events are particularly related to agriculture: Forest day and Agriculture, Landscapes and Livelihoods Day, December 2 and 3 (organized by CGIAR). As we have learned during GCARD2, special media gives us the opportunity to engage, to get the voice heard of... More

COP18 for Dummies COP18 is the 18th edition of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). They meet annually to assess progress in dealing with climate change. There are now 195 parties to the convention taking part in climate change negotiations. All parties to the UNFCCC are represented at the COP. During... More

YPARD, the Young Professionals' Platform for Agricultural Research for Development, as a core community of young professionals for young professionals in ARD, was given particular attention as mechanism through which supporting the youth from GCARD2 roadmap to implementation. Empowering Youth capacity building for ARD The dedicated session on empowering youth and women through capacity building (C2.2) comes naturally as the most... More

6 months ago, Sabina and Nawsheen were taking the challenge to start a remote internship of around 10 hours a week with YPARD. Sabina, Tri-lingual Star! Sabina was working on translations of key documents, communications products and articles in English, French and Spanish. She benefitted of the supervision of French and Spanish mother language speakers able to reflect the texts within... More

The GCARD2 communication team shared with us few numbers about GCARD2 coverage. "Giving space and voice to participants who did not travel to Uruguay; advocating the importance of agriculture in achieving a food secure future; and building capacities of young professionals, the leaders of tomorrow, to have a voice in shaping the world they will live in, were the three objectives... More

Setting the scene Between 16 and 20 Young people present flesh&bones at GCARD2 YPARD pre-event session. Some of them leave shortly to pop-up in other pre-event sessions related to their field of expertise or regional activities. Many of them are also GCARD2 Social reporting trainees. Laptop in hands, they replace the traditional note-taking to tweeting! So, to this bunch of YPs,... More

“Agriculture is an ageing and undervalued profession in many countries and special attention must be given to encouraging young people into careers in all aspects of AR4D...It is important that young people themselves help express what changes are needed in agricultural education and incentives to make careers more attractive and valued and better recognize the range of roles now required in... More

The state of "Foresight" Foresight (ability to explore/anticipate and plan the future) is considered essential for understanding future agricultural and rural development contexts and changes around the world, and for driving the research and innovation required to meet these needs.  An inventory of forward looking anticipatory works was conducted earlier this year by GFAR, the Global Forum on Agricultural Research. A... More