The World Food Prize Global Youth Institute provides a three-day, all expenses paid educational opportunity for high school students. Students interact with Nobel and World Food Prize Laureates and are exposed to an array of experts and organizations working to address food security around the world.
2011 forms are available below. More details including dates of events coming soon.
The Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture has created the Texas Youth Institute Symposium and the Mexico Youth Institute Symposium as extensions of the World Food Prize Global Youth Institute. Students from all over the state of Texas and the country of Mexico are invited to submit essays and participate in the events. The topic for the 2011 essay will be “Millennium Goals: Agriculture to Trade“.
All of the students who write essays will be invited to the Texas Youth Institute Symposium or the Mexico Youth Institute Symposium, held in Mexico City, Mexico (dates to be announced shortly). The top three students from Texas and the top three students from Mexico (and their respective teacher-mentors) will be invited to attend the World Food Prize Global Youth Institute. This includes a three-day trip to Des Moines, Iowa, where students will learn from World Food Prize and Nobel Laureates for three days of dialogue, presentations and interaction. The Global Youth Institute takes place in October during the World Food Prize activities in Des Moines, Iowa.
Student and faculty teams prepare discussion papers, which are presented by the students during a day-long seminar before a panel of World Food Prize Council of Advisors and Laureates – individuals who are acknowledged leaders in a broad range of food and agricultural disciplines. The papers are published in the Youth Institute Proceedings. Discussion and interaction with fellow students and presentations by industry, research and policy leaders enhance the overall experience.
By participating in the Global Youth Institute held in Iowa, students are eligible to apply for a prestigious Borlaug-Ruan International Internship, an all expenses paid, eight-week hands-on experience, working with renowned scientists and policy makers at leading research centers in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Since 1998, over 140 Borlaug-Ruan Interns have traveled to Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Kenya, Peru, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad, and Turkey to get a firsthand view of pressing food security problems in poverty-stricken areas and take part in ground-breaking research.
The Foundation stresses the uniqueness of this program from other study abroad internship programs in that the student becomes an integral part of the project spending time in the lab as well as days or weeks at a time in the field conducting research and gathering data. The goal of the Summer Internship Program is to inspire young people to pursue careers in food, agricultural and natural resource disciplines.
Paper specifications and other information can be found below (Mexico forms forthcoming):
Texas Youth Institute forms will be posted shortly.
Topic information on the 2011 World Food Prize Youth Institute can be found here.
The World Food Prize Youth Institute website can be found at:
http://www.worldfoodprize.org/en/youth_programs/global_youth_institute/texas/
For questions, please contact:
Julie Borlaug
Assistant Director for Partnerships
Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture
jborlaug@ag.tamu.edu