Last year, despite the start of the pandemic, the Rural Youth Innovation Award generated an enthusiastic response throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Almost 600 youth initiatives across 18 of the region’s countries competed for one of 10 prizes.
The success of the award’s First Edition opened the door for a second one, which was launched on 3 March from Costa Rica through a virtual event organized in collaboration with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA). This Second Edition seeks to identify and reward innovative youth-led initiatives to overcome the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the region’s rural communities.
Last year, Una Mano para Oaxaca was the winning initiative in the Education category. This organization presented a post-disaster reconstruction methodology, grounded in traditional uses and mutual help practices, that was implemented after the 2017 earthquake in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Perseida Tenorio, one of its founders, participated in the Second Edition launch event.
“It’s a crucial moment in history: every year natural resources are depleted; entire cultures disappear; wars, plagues and hunger put our and our loved ones’ lives at risk,” she remarked. “This is why is so important to have spaces for learning and sharing acquired knowledge. This is why this award is such a good initiative. It gives young people a window of opportunity for them to transform their social context through innovation, education, technology and, above all, love: love for our people, our region, our cultures, our countries and Latin America.”
The Rural Youth Innovation Award is an initiative of the LAC Knowledge and South-South and Triangular Cooperation Centre, based in Brasilia, Brazil. It also has the support of the China-IFAD SSTC Facility.
The candidates must present an innovative and sustainable rural development initiative already in implementation by young people (18 to 35 years old). The initiative has to be an example of good practices or applied technologies and would ideally be replicable – or even scalable – in other rural areas. It must fall under one of the following categories, changed slightly from the previous edition: Marketing and Market Access Solutions; Connectivity Solutions; Financial Inclusion; Recycling and Alternative Energies; and Women’s Empowerment and Gender Inclusion.
Applicants have until 4 April to register their initiatives. A panel of experts will then evaluate them and identify 20 finalists. The 10 winners will be announced in an award ceremony at the end of June. They will benefit from media promotion, in-kind rewards, and opportunities for knowledge exchange.
Despite the pandemic’s effects on the event schedule, the Award Team kept working, motivated by the great response to its First Edition and inspired by the quality of the initiatives coming in from across the region – initiatives that, despite the circumstances the region is going through, seek to take the future into their hands and encourage the development of a society free from poverty and hunger, leaving no one behind.
Once more, the Award Team is pleased to share with IFAD colleagues its enthusiasm for working with and for Latin American rural youth.