AsiaDHRRA organizes its first Thematic Learning Session focusing on Rural Youth, with the theme “Youth as Frontrunners for Sustainable Rural Development”, on 27 May 2022 via Zoom online.
Implementing the new AsiaDHRRA Strategic Action Plan (SAP) 2021 – 2025 is anchored on cross-cutting concerns as fundamental building blocks of the network’s programs and projects at different levels. These building blocks include: (1) territorial rural development, (2) climate resilience and agroecology, (3) rural youth and women, and (4) agriculture digitalization. AsiaDHRRA will be conducting a series of thematic learning sessions on each of these building blocks. These thematic learning sessions shall provide the secretariats, the members, and the partner-RPOs as a platform to arrive at a common understanding and position, share and learn good practices and success stories, and identify operational strategies needed to advance these cross-cutting concerns.
For the first thematic learning session, the discussion would center on Rural Youth. In the SAP, AsiaDHRRA commits to pay specific attention to rural youth’s participation in capacity-building and development undertakings, equal representation in the leadership of the local platforms/networks supported, and any decision-making processes contributing to the development of partner-RPOs.
Across the network, initiatives on Youth are being pushed forward through the concurrent interlinking projects such as (a) Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI) and (b) Youth Capacity Development towards Decent Employment Opportunity for Sustainable Agriculture, which was also supplemented by the recently concluded regional study on the Challenges and Opportunities for Addressing Child Labour in Small-scale Fishery and Aquaculture Value Chains. All these are under the support of United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (UN-FAO) and are significantly embedded in the framework of the UN Decade of Family Farming, lensed in the campaigns of AsiaDHRRA.
The general objective of this 1st thematic learning session to gain deeper understanding on current issues affecting the youth in agriculture in the region.
- Share the network’s regional study results on youth;
- Level-off and exchange on information critical to shaping the network’s overall direction andstrategies in the pursuit of youth development in agriculture.
- Identify operational strategies and key actions in the immediate period.
