Ask Ag Chat: Youth, Employment and a Food Secure Future

Photo: USAID Feed the Future

Event Information

This online chat will take place at the bottom of this page. Get a jump on the conversation and share a question or comment now.

Youth hold the future of the global agro-food system in their hands, but many young people in developing countries do not see agriculture as an attractive or viable career choice. How can we better engage youth and support their livelihoods as we plan future agricultural development projects?

Join our upcoming Ask Ag online chat on Sept. 15 from 12-1 p.m. EDT, where Agrilinks community members will dig into youth and employment. For one hour, experts will answer your questions and discuss new research, discoveries and findings in their own development work. It all takes place right here in our Comments section! This Ask Ag chat stems from a recent Feed the Future roundtable that addressed critical topics for global food security, including youth and employment. Participants discussed why youth and employment is important to food security, how demographic differences impact unemployment and what skills are required to integrate youth in agro-food systems.  

There are two ways to get a head start on the discussion:

1. Post a question for our experts right now in the Comments section below, and/or return to this page on September 15 from 12-1 p.m. EDT to engage in the live discussion. 

2. Check out the "Youth and Employment" roundtable summary to read some thoughts from Feed the Future stakeholders on where priorities might lie in engaging youth.

Guiding questions:
  • How can we ensure that youth voices are being heard in discussions on their role in agro-food system development? 
  • What tools and technologies can make agro-food system jobs more attractive and profitable for youth? 
  • How can youth advance food security in their communities apart from working in agricultural production?
  • Youth are very diverse, in terms of gender, education, stage of their life cycle, etc. How should we engage different youth demographics differently?

A look ahead: The 10th Anniversary Global Youth Economic Opportunities Summit will convene influencers who create and implement innovative solutions, September 28-30, 2016, in Washington, D.C. Be a part of the leading global event for expanding youth economic opportunity.

Speakers

Mark Brennan

UNESCO | Pennsylvania State University

Mark Brennan, Ph.D. is the UNESCO Chair for Rural Community, Leadership, and Youth Development and Professor of Leadership and Community Development at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Brennan’s teaching, research, writing, and program development concentrates on the role of community and leadership development in the youth, community, and rural development process. In this context, much of his work has focused on community action, youth development and social justice. He is co-founder of the Global Network of UNESCO Chairs on Children, Youth and Community. Dr. Brennan has over 20 years’ experience designing, conducting, and analyzing social science research related to community and rural development. This work has involved extensive comparative research throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia and Central America. Dr. Brennan’s research and program development has been funded by a variety of government, foundation, and private sources and resulting in over 100 publications in leading peer-reviewed journals, books, and Extension publications, and over 175 presentations at professional meetings. His recent books include Theory, Practice, and Community Development (2013) and Community Leadership Development: A Compendium of Theory, Research, and Application (2013). All of his research and teaching outputs have been translated into outreach curriculum to facilitate the transfer of knowledge to a wider international audience.

Lydia Mbevi

ACDI/VOCA

Lydia Mbevi is ACDI/VOCA’s regional gender and youth advisor based in Nairobi, Kenya. In her role, Mbevi ensures that programs in Africa are benefiting both men and women, girls and boys. These programs include livelihoods and economic empowerment, value chain development, agribusiness, health and nutrition, emergency response and food security. She supports programs in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Malawi, Zambia, Liberia, Ghana, Sierra Leone, the Philippines and Kyrgyzstan. Lydia is responsible for mentoring and building the capacity of the program gender specialists and youth advisors. She is also responsible for developing context specific resources and tools, supervising gender analysis, youth analysis and development of gender strategies and youth engagement plans, as well as ensuring that gender strategies and youth engagement plans supplement local government efforts. Lydia has a master’s degree in gender and development.

Morgan Mercer

ACDI/VOCA

Morgan Mercer is a Gender and Youth specialist at ACDI/VOCA. In her role, she provides technical guidance to programs related to gender integration, women’s empowerment, and youth development; and guides the design and development of technical strategies and tools in gender and youth for the organization. Prior to ACDI/VOCA, Mercer conducted gender assessments for CARE International in Mali and Tanzania, and developed curriculum and training content on behavior change interventions for youth for AED and Danya International. She has a M.A. in Development Practice from Emory University and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of South Carolina.

Dina Karic

Cardno Emerging Markets

Dina Karic is a Senior Advisor in Cardno’s Economic Growth group, based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). A competitiveness expert, she works on enterprise development, market facilitation and workforce development programs in the Balkans, Sub­-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Prior to her role as a Senior Advisor, she was the Chief of Party of the USAID funded FIRMA project in BiH. The FIRMA project supported competitiveness of value chains in select sectors with the goal of increasing sales and employment, and also helped create Vocational Educational Training (VET) councils as a mechanism that allows the private sector to regularly communicate its needs.

Gary Walker

USAID Bureau for Food Security

Gary Walker is the Senior Youth Advisor for Feed the Future in the USAID Bureau for Food Security. His job is to help Feed the Future to become more youth inclusive and to help mainstream youth across Feed the Future’s portfolio. He has extensive experience in development policy and programming, project design and evaluation. He has more than 40 years of experience with workforce development, education, rural livelihoods, food security and other areas. He has had long-term assignments as a COP, Senior Advisor and technical consultant in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Zambia and has carried out scores of short-term consultancies in over 30 African countries plus Haiti and a few in Asia. He is a graduate of the American University School of International Service and the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

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