VELLORE: With a current member base of 3,500 young professionals from 117 countries, the Young Professionals' Platform for Agricultural Research for Development (YPARD), Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, Rome, Italy is taking steps to increase its member base to 10,000 in the next two to three years and attract more young people to agricultural research for development.
Dr.G. Viswanathan, VIT Chancellor,Ms.Courtney Paisley, Global coordinator, YPARD, Shri.Sankar Viswanathan, Vice-President (Administration), Dr.V.Raju, Vice-Chancellor,Dr.G.Anilkumar,Director and Dr.R.Seenivasan, YPARD Asia Co-ordiantor is in the picture.
VELLORE: With a current member base of 3,500 young professionals from 117 countries, the Young Professionals' Platform for Agricultural Research for Development (YPARD), Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, Rome, Italy is taking steps to increase its member base to 10,000 in the next two to three years and attract more young people to agricultural research for development.
It was in this direction that YPARD inked a Memorandum of Understanding with VIT University to establish the YPARD Asia office at the university during a meeting of local and regional representatives and capacity building workshop on Monday.
The meeting, according to Courtney Paisley, Global Coordinator of YPARD, was to strengthen the regions and thereby build up a global network.
“There are representatives from Latin America, Asia and Africa. We will be discussing activities and medium term plans during the meeting. Strategic areas such as facilitating increased access to information among young professionals, promoting youth participation in agricultural research for development, career in agriculture and how to make agriculture attractive for young people will be discussed,” she told reporters.
The week-long deliberation will look into the activities and resources needed for the next five years, pointed out Balasubramanian Ramani, YPARD International Office, Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany.
He said they aimed to enhance sharing of information with young people and also to provide capacity building and skill training to them.
“Web tools have been developed to spread our member base and attract more young professionals. We have developed a new website of YPARD – www.ypard.net. The network is going to be a very active one and it will be explained to all representatives, who in turn will train young professionals in their respective regions,” he explained.
With the highest number of members being from India, which was about 800 to 900, he said that YPARD was keen on increasing its member base from the present 3,500 to 10,000 in two to three years. “Through the YPARD Asia office at VIT University, we will be able to reach out to more students in universities,” he added.
Stressing the need to increase food productivity, Chancellor of the university G. Viswanathan said, “We require technology to be used in agriculture. Agriculturists should use technology to increase productivity.” He said the university will take steps to popularise the movement.
Among others, Vice Chancellor of the university V. Raju, Vice President (Administration) Sankar Viswanathan and Director-School of Bioscience Technology Anil Kumar Gopinath were present.
Source:http://www.hindu.com/2010/10/12/stories/2010101253000300.htm