Young Minds to Ensure Better Rural Future

Recurring the past years up to now, the food security issue is being hot discussion among the unsolved global problems. Being as an academic student of food technology and a concerned youth, this subject has always been the matter of interest. I used to wonder how I will be able to join the discussion and make a significant contribution towards the issue.

Being YPARDian!

I feel very lucky being a part of such a young-minded dynamic platform, YPARD. In January 2015, I got selected as participant in agri-entrepreneurship workshop, NYFAED15 organized by YPARD Nepal and my YPARD journey began. Since, I was very much impressed by the objective of YPARD to foster youth in agricultural development. Then signing up to the YPARD website and following its social media sites were an incredible exposure for me. I was like, Ahh! Yes!! This is exactly what I was looking for!!!

During 1^st YPARD Asia and Pacific Conference  in September 2015, I got an opportunity to meet with YPARD Asia and Pacific Coordination Unit and correspondent country representatives which made me more attached to YPARD family. Later, I received another opportunity to represent YPARD as one of the 5 social reporters and a youth delegate in High Level Policy Dialogue on Investment in Agricultural Research for Sustainable Development in the Asia-Pacific Region (HLPD), Bangkok, Thailand.

We were also facilitated by one day Social Media workshop prior to HLPD, which became one of the best moments in my life to expand my horizon in art of blogging, live tweeting and other social media platforms for the communication and information sharing. And now, I am utilizing those skills in every possible way.

2016 is the 10^th anniversary of YPARD, and is being celebrating across the world. As a part of YPARD Nepal chapter, last week- we three (Abhisekh Khadka, Animesh Khadka and myself) were gathered and baked a cake, also we discussed about the future plan of YPARD Nepal activities.

#GCARD3: Shaping the Future of Agriculture

GCARD3 global event on our way with the key theme which is going to focus on the 5 key themes by covering many issues raised in different national and regional consultations. Every single theme is important and logical. However, I will be focusing more on “ensuring better rural futures.” I believe by securing rural future of farmers, youth and everyone involving may lead us to cope with the issues of world hunger, poverty and ultimately to meet up the SDGs.

In Nepal, the majority of people are depending upon agriculture for their daily survival. However, agriculture being considered as an unglamorous and old-fashioned, youth are making distance to it. Due to poor investment in agricultural research and development, most of the Nepalese youth are out-migrating for better income. Daily thousands of Nepalese youth out migrates in the search of foreign employment. By ensuring rural future on the agricultural basis, not only secures food but also aids to self-employment, thus helps to reduce poverty. So, I believe the event is going be a milestone in the field of agricultural research and innovation and hence I would like to be a part of it.

Being a young student representing developing and an agricultural country, there will be lots of lessons to be learned, lots of moments to be experienced, lots of topics to be discussed, opportunities to be delighted of, and most importantly retuning back with them to disseminate. I therefore want to contribute in the #GCARD3 representing my home country and come up with the probable solutions. We can also include the way forwards in upcoming YPARD Nepal activities.

This blog post is part of the GCARD3 Youth blogpost applications. The content, structure and grammar is at the discretion of the author only.

Photo credit: Abhisekh Khadka