Engaging youth for a sustainable future
Investing in youth is investing in the future. This sums up perfectly why youth inclusion is crucial to the future of the farming sector in Bolivia. As the main source of food production, agriculture is key to food security. However, rural youth tend to be attracted to the promise of a “better life” in major cities and rural organizations and farmers, often biased, don’t take action to attract and engage them.
Thanks to the investment from UNIFOR’s Social Justice Fund, Crossroads International and its local partner Association of Ecological Producer Organization of Bolivia (AOPEB) launched a two-year pilot project to change this reality. Running from January 2015 to January 2017, the project actively engaged youth in farming to show them that agriculture is a viable career while at the same time working with producer organizations and current farmers to find new ways to attract and involve youth in farming activities.
Several interventions helped youth develop their skills and show their importance to the future of farming and food security. Twenty-four youth were trained in ecological schools and 22 implemented their demonstration plots under sustainable production systems, therefore increasing the use of sustainable production methods. Even more significant was the farmer-to-farmer approach where trained youth mentored other youth from other producer organizations, sharing their knowledge and using their plots to replicate the training received from the ecological schools. Thanks to this approach, 190 youth were trained and 22 more plots were piloted in other communities. This strong engagement from youth and producer organizations demonstrated that the interventions did help overcome cultural and traditional barriers to youth engagement, although young women still faced barriers to participation.
Intergenerational dialogue and sensitization programs also proved to be really effective and boosted acceptance of the importance of youth to the future of agriculture with a 10% increase in youth membership and participation in Ecological Producer Organizations (EPO). Several youth also joined the boards of directors of their EPO.
Crossroader Tara Scanlan went to Bolivia to evaluate and produce a progress report of the two-year project. “It was a really successful project. […] It needs to be longer in duration to follow a full production cycle,” Tara said. In her report, she advises to continue working with the participants through the duration of their harvests until the commercialization of their crops. “There are a lot of skills needed to help negotiate and sell once the product is ready,” she explained.
Given these results, Crossroads and its partners are exploring opportunities to continue this work.
