On the occasion of the World International Youth Day and the celebration of the International Year of Family Farming (IYFF14), YPARD Nepal launched at a national level the “Family farming photo contest.” Besides this, an offline program was conducted in the Agriculture and Forestry University (AFU), Rampur, Chitwan.
The motive of the program was none other than to mark the importance of family farming as well as to launch the photo contest. Khem Raj Dahal, Chief guest and YPARD Nepal Advisor, inaugurated the program by opening a banner for the contest. Then, the Program host, Sujan Poudel, called the different guests to talk about family farming and agriculture related topics.
AgriYouthNepal & Biodiversity
The first one to start talking was Swikriti Panday by giving a welcome speech. Then, the AgriYouthNepal (AYN) representative, Santosh Koirala, highlighted the role of AYN in boosting YPARD Nepal Family Farming photo contest, as well as the importance of the approaches made to promote agriculture through AgriYouthNepal platform. The representative of the local students' organization, Shilu Dahal, contributed to the discussions by underlining the relevance of such program in motivating the students.
Other guests like the Assistant professor Sramika Rijal and Nirajan Bhattarai pointed out the importance of family farming in biodiversity conservation, as well as how family farming and kitchen gardening have significantly helped to improve child nutrition from their own research work, respectively.
More YPARDians needed!
"I have never experienced such innovative program from students in 25 years of profession", said the Students' Welfare Committee President, Arvind Srivastava. Likewise, he emphasized the need to register and engage students and agriculture stakeholders in YPARD.
Guest Ramchandra Bastakoti, Advisor of mushroom farming Project, also shared his professional experience with YPARD Nepal during the mushroom farming project. An initiative that Aksana Dallakoti presented together with YPARD Nepal networks, its program and future planing. (View Presentation)
Online events, a powerful way to raise family farmers´ voice
The Photo contest event coordinator, Madan Poudel, described in detail the picture competition by highlighting the power of online events to raise the voice of family farmers. (View Presentation). Moreover, Khem Raj Dahal gave a presentation on the International Year of Family Farming and its relevance in the Nepalese context. (View Presentation). To close the Program, the overall activities were summarized by the Chair Sapana Ghimire.
YPARD Nepal photo contest was inaugurated with a blog post written by Nepal representative Dinesh Panday.
Submission is now open for all Nepali citizens, so enter the contest and fill the registration form!
Picture Credit: Bhumi Raj Bhandari