2013 Copyright Exeleadmen. All rights reserved.

2013 Next Generation of African Hunger Fighters Speaker Series: Youth Innovators: Hunger Fighters and Change Agents
Organized by Global Youth Innovation Network (GYIN), Africa Agribusiness Magazine (AAM) Thursday, September 19th 2013 from 12:30pm to 2:30p.m Howard University

Rationale of the Speaker series

The current economic crisis is adversely impacting three key issues associated with the sustainable development of young people, across Africa and in the world: employment, enterprise and development funding. It has exacerbated the difficulties they face in finding decent employment, gaining access to credit, creating businesses and feeding themselves. This represents quite a paradox when a high proportion of these young people have vision and ideas that could provide them with employment through enterprise development. This sentiment has been expressed in terms of civil unrest, as demonstrated most prominently by youth in Northern Africa, and other parts of Africa and in the world. In recent decades, a number of global and regional initiatives spurred by the United Nations (UN) have been adopted by Governments to push the youth development agenda forward. In its 2002 UN resolution on Promoting Youth Employment, the international community recognized that Governments have a primary responsibility to educate young women and men, to ensure equal access to all youth living in their country and to create an enabling environment that will promote youth employment. Other initiatives have been undertaken by the African Union to address youth issues: (i) The New Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD) launched a youth desk that gives youth a platform for dialogue and enabled them to contribute to policy debates and has in recently been advocating and promoting a youth transformative agenda; (ii) In 2006, the African Union (AU) Heads of State adopted the African Youth Charter, a legal instrument defining the rights, duties and freedoms of young people, which underpins youth empowerment. The Charter emphasizes the importance of education and skills development for improving the livelihoods of youth; (iii) The AU further developed other tools and instruments to effectively engage youth, such as the 2009-2018 Ten-Year AU Plan of Action for Youth Empowerment and Development, the AU Youth Volunteer Corps Programme and African Youth Day. It is within this broad context, the Global Youth Innovation Network (GYIN), Africa Agribusiness Magazine (AAM), in partnership with several other organizations initiated the 2013 Next Generation of African Hunger Fighters Speakers Series to learn how young women and men especially in rural areas are increasingly transforming themselves as Hunger

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Fighters and Change Agents by unleashing their potentialities in diverse ways to feed their communities. The goal of the speaker series is to bring the African youth voices, practitioners, policy makers, and experts in agribusiness together for two hours, and create an enabling environment under which young people can be nurtured, equipped, trained, and supported to fight hunger on their own behalf and to facilitate exchange of experiences, learning and networking for young entrepreneurs and smallholder farmers. To ensure that it impacts the next generation in it diversity, the speaker series will be implemented within five program areas: Leadership, Agribusiness, Entrepreneurship, Community Learning, and Education with innovations and policy development as cross sectors. Objective 1 (Leadership): to build sustainable poor rural youth businesses that are more resilient to climate change, environmental degradation, and market transformation.

Objective 2 (Agribusiness): to contribute directly to the reduction of poverty through raising incomes of smallholder farmers in rural areas.

Objective 3 (Entrepreneurship): to give poor rural youth the skills to manage profitable, sustainable, and resilient farm and non-farm enterprises.

Objective 4 (Community Learning & Partnership ): to develop public/private partnership building activities and support of rural youth advocates allowing poor rural youth and organizations to influence policies and institutions that affect their livelihoods.

Objective 5 (Education): to research the characteristics of enabling environments and empowering poor, rural youth to articulate these needs to institutions and policy makers.

Rather than seeing young people as a challenge, we see them as partners who contribute to the socio-economic growth and development. The global demographic is substantialtoday, there are over 1.8 billion adolescents and youth around the world. At the end of 2010, over 75 million young people ages 15-24 were struggling to find work or feed themselves. In order to support young people in transforming local economies and fight hunger, more banks must provide appropriate financial services to youth, more industries must train their workforce for current and future market demands, more institutions must mainstream entrepreneurship and

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agribusiness, and nurture potential entrepreneurs, and more governments must encourage youth innovation and engagement. We need to do these things in an effective and inclusive way by prioritizing young peoples needs, considering their developmental needs, and including girls and other marginalized populations to ensure equity. In this context, the RHB series present the 2013 Next Generation of Hunger Fighters Speaker series to address youth challenges in achieving food security. There are a number of challenges in feeding youth and getting them employment. More needs to be done to facilitate the participation of young people. These challenges include: The absence of role models, cultural obstacles, lack of personal motivation, work experience and skills, limited social and business networks. A culture shift from doing for young people to doing with young people, where developing youth policy direction and program delivery involves young people to the maximum extent possible creating a true sense of self-reliance and self-ownership. Lack of access to land, capital, and other resources. Building a support environment for entrepreneurship and agribusiness. Expanding access to and improving the quality of training opportunities. Making agriculture more attractive to youth and young entrepreneurs.

Vision
To contribute to the reduction of poverty among poor and rural youth in Africa, America, Europe, and Asia by providing innovative opportunities for young entrepreneurs as Hunger Fighters in the areas of leadership, agribusiness, entrepreneurship, education, and community learning.

Mission
This speaker series seeks to identify and educate 100 young entrepreneurs from different background countries to become hunger fighters and establish a truly global network of young farmers, agribusiness entrepreneurs, leaders, and innovators. The speaker series is hosted bimonthly to create an environment that is conducive for the sharing of skill, knowledge, and experiences. It will also actively support young entrepreneurs in the implementation of projects aimed at developing their local communities through self-sustaining socio-economic and cultural opportunities based on practical success stories that can guarantee a decent life for the next generation.

Strategy, Approach, and Activities

In order to make youth hunger fighters and help create businesses for them, we propose an integrated approach to promoting food security, environmental sustainability and economic opportunity through: Advocacy, Linkages, Partnership, Knowledge Management, and Communication Market and Business Services,

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Entrepreneurship, Agribusiness, Education & Training, Role Modeling, Mentorship and Coaching, Resources Mobilization and Sustainability, Capacity Building and Access to Capital

These activities have been identified as means to provide youth with professional skills and competencies, entrepreneurship and business opportunities, a market, some resources, and land if needed to fight hunger. By 2015, this speaker series aims to lift 5,000 youth out of poverty through exposure to new business prospects, innovation, and knowledge of successful and replicable models of youthrun agribusinesses. Management and Implementation Each partner will be part of a committee, advisory group, or responsible for developing a component of the speaker series and establishing performance measurements for program evaluation as well as promoting the young entrepreneurs initiatives to communities, businesses, and other organizations. Specific responsibilities include but are not limited to: Steering Committee consists of 12 young entrepreneurs and 1 coordinator who act as the core youth representatives with oversight in the functioning, operation and overall planning and management of the Speaker series. Government Advisory Group consists of 15 government officials who act as the liaison between the steering committee coordinator and government agencies to mobilize resources and support from the federal and local US government. Corporate Advisory Group consists of 15 corporate officials who act as the liaison between the steering committee coordinator and corporations to mobilize resources and support from fortune 500 companies. Civil Society Advisory Group consists of 15 civil society leaders who act as the liaison between the steering committee coordinator and nonprofits and Think Tanks to mobilize resources, expertise and support. World Bank and IMF Group consist of 15 professionals who act as the liaison between the steering committee coordinator and the World Bank and IMF to mobilize resources and support. Media Advisory Group consists of 15 professional journalists who act as the liaison between the steering committee coordinator and the press to raise the conversation to a global lever and engage experts and practitioners to join the conversation. Academia Advisory Group consists of 15 scholars who act as the liaison between the steering committee coordinator and education institutions to bring in best practices, cases studies and research in the conversation of fighting hunger. Next Generation Champions Group consists of 15 young professionals who care

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about youth issues and agribusiness, and are willing to act as champions of fighting hunger and youth employment. Advisory Coaching Group consists of 15 executive leaders who will serve as mentors, coaches, and counselors to the champions and open doors to facilitating the organization of the speaker series.

The terms of the partnership between an organization and the Speaker series will be outlined in a MOU, which will be signed. the purpose of the MOU is to ensure that the Speaker series operates fully as youth-led initiatives and resources and expertise sharing platform for institutions and organizations to identify, support, represent and promote youth needs, interests, ambitions and aspirations more accurately, effectively and efficient manner.

Partners and Sponsors

Governments: MCC, USDA, Peace Corps, State Department, USAID, SBA, MSDA, OPIC, DC Government, White House Civil Society: Bill Gates Foundation, Clinton Global Initiative, Ford Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Word Food Prize, Partnership for Hunger, Bread for the World, Enactus, Nexus, MCN, CFA, GYIN, CCA, and Africa Gathering, Corporations: Chevron, ExxonMobil, MERK, Accenture, Apple, Microsoft, GE, BASF, KPMG, Western Union, MoneyGram, and Walmart. Media: Africa Agribusiness, BET, NPR, CNN International, RFI, African Views, Voice of America, and Africa Channel. Academia: HU, AU, GU, GWU, Arizona State University, Tuskegee University, TU, and UDC. Bilateral Organizations: UN Foundation, UN, IFAD, FAO, WFP, Unicef Fund, 4H,

2013 Copyright Exeleadmen. All rights reserved.