Empowering youth in agrifood systems initiatives

Abstract In recent years, youth have been encouraged to become agents of change and help facilitate agrifood systems transformation through several initiatives focused on youth empowerment. However, in this context, there has been limited discussion of how initiatives have supported youth empowerment. In this perspective piece, we, the authors, describe actions for advancing youth empowerment based on our experiences from various youth-oriented agrifood systems initiatives we have been part of. Many of the initiatives we draw on have engaged undergraduate or postgraduate students, and the authors are all pursuing or have pursued postgraduate education—therefore, we recognise that our experiences may differ to youth with other backgrounds and from initiatives with different scopes. We perceive that good practices facilitating youth empowerment have included: (1) creating safe and supportive environments for youth to engage in discussions and develop ideas; (2) the appointment of youth to leadership positions; (3) the involvement of youth in decision-making processes; (4) training and educating youth members; (5) facilitating youth to network, be part of collaborations, and attend high-level meetings; and (6) facilitating youth to be part of socio-political processes and impactful projects. However, despite positive experiences, we had experienced barriers to effective youth empowerment, whereby some initiatives had failed to provide supportive and safe environments, occasionally disregarded youth ideas and efforts, and limited youth engagement to tokenistic participation. Initiatives aiming to empower youth could benefit from: (1) having defined strategies in place for youth involvement and empowerment; (2) clarifying mutual expectations between them and their youth members; (3) openly discussing youth’s position in society, developing intergenerational respect, and promoting a community identity among youth; (4) implementing monitoring and evaluation processes to better understand their impacts from youth engagement and on youth empowerment; and (5) fostering teamwork capacities for youth from different backgrounds and geographical locations.