This week the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization hosted the world food summit in Rome, hoping to raise awareness of the rising number of hungry people worldwide – a figure which now exceeds one billion for the first time since records were established in 1970.
Unfortunately, the summit revealed that the U.N. is not in a position to meet its own goals of alleviating hunger. The United Nations did not set a target to eradicate hunger by 2025 as proposed. U.N. experts also say that halving the number of hungry people by the previously set 2015 deadline is not possible – and the goal may not be reached until mid-2040 at the earliest.
Young people provide an untapped resource to redirect this ineffectual course. Our idealism and open-mindedness to new solutions create opportunities that empower communities to develop their own solutions to poverty. Generation Y is the generation of social innovation.
In Kenya, 22 year-old Laura MacArthur is creating a demonstration farm. Laura will work with farmers and farming organizations in Kayafungo, Kenya to teach and make available modern farming technologies, increasing the farmers’ crop yields and confronting hunger. The demonstration farm will teach the best practices in farming used worldwide, implement a solar-powered drip irrigation system – using green technologies to increase the crop yield – and create a digital video curriculum.
Another volunteer, 21 year-old Jessica Maurer is creating a women-owned and women-run agricultural co-op at a nursery school which will provide nutritious food for school lunches and generate revenue for the school to purchase much-needed classroom supplies. The importance of quality early childhood education is taken for granted in the United States, but in Makrepeni, South Africa, parents need every incentive available to send their children to nursery school. The distribution of nutritious lunches to the students provides the needed incentive, which will set Makrepeni’s children on the path toward a quality education.
To address the worldwide hunger crisis, our philosophy must be to engage the entrepreneurial generation – those who will create the much-needed sustainable and innovative solutions to poverty-reduction. In doing so we will develop the next generation of CEOs, policymakers, international entrepreneurs and philanthropists who personally understand the potential for development from within local communities and who can create and support new solutions to reduce hunger.
My generation yearns to create poverty-reduction solutions that will continue to affect the lives of those in rural communities for years to come.
My generation wants to create something from conception to completion – from design to implementation.
My generation doesn’t want to “paint a wall” or “pile bricks” in the developing world. Generation Y wants to do more, and we’re up to the task.
Saul Garlick, 26, is the founder and executive director of ThinkImpact, an international non-profit that has connected hundreds of American college students and recent graduates with rural villages in Africa to alleviate poverty. Garlick founded the organization, formerly known as the Student Movement for Real Change when he was a high school student at Denver East High School. For more information, visit . EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
