Washington, D.C.: Four university students from the city of Monterrey, Mexico won an international short video competition, “My Food, Our Future”, organized by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to mark the World Food Day on October 16.
Alicia Mattenberger (22), Mariana Cortes(22), Claudia Garcia (23), and Frida Garza (23), currently studying for a dietitian degree at the University of Monterrey, won the top position in the youth category (18-25 years) of the annual short video contest to receive the $500 prize. Mattenberger, Garcia, Cortes and Garza jointly submitted a two-minute video, titled, “Solving Hunger, Food Waste and Malnutrition,” [INSERT LINK] highlighting the double burden of malnutrition in Mexico, public health challenges it poses, and offering multisectoral solutions.
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., IFPRI organized its first annual short video contest, “My Food, Our Future”, to raise awareness and encourage youth to get involved in finding solutions to food security challenges in their neighborhood, community, and country. This year’s theme for the contest encouraged participants to offer ideas and solutions to help ensure the world has access to healthy, diverse, and affordable diets.
“The youth are a powerful resource for economic development and social progress. Young people hold tremendous energy and creativity to not only contribute to agriculture, but also in addressing the major challenges facing humanity – hunger, poverty, and climate change,” said IFPRI Director General, Shenggen Fan. “It is imperative for the current generation to help remove the barriers youth face in order to reach the full potential of our youth and our world. The video contest enables us to listen to and amplify the voices of youth across the globe,” added Fan.
In the video, Mattenberger, Garcia, Cortes and Garza propose combining the knowledge of middle school teachers, farmers, dietitians, and education experts to evolve a multidisciplinary approach to provide access to healthy, diverse and affordable diets. “One way to ensure better access to healthy, diverse and afford able diets for everyone is by providing the tools of how to grow their fruits and vegetables with the tools our target population may have at school and home, and how to prepare healthy dishes with them,” said the university students.
The young nutrition students learnt about the contest from their thesis supervisor, who encouraged them to compete and participate as a team. They believe the solutions they offer in the video are attainable, creative, and could improve food and nutrition security not only among Mexican adolescents, but around the world. “We believe that we need to act now to encourage interdisciplinary teams and bring people together to create a more helpful food environment otherwise it will be too late. The difficult goals are achieved when acting with a team and by having a common goal and a realistic solution worldwide,” said the four students.
While all four of them want to pursue a career as a dietitian to bring about awareness around healthy lifestyles, they are hoping to obtain advanced degrees in specialized fields to plug nutritional gaps in areas of critical diseases, lifestyle diseases and develop educational programs for the prevention of diseases.
Other winners in this category include runners up Russia’s Nadya Putyakova and Nepal’s Grace Tiwari who will receive $250 prize each. In the second youth category (10-17 years), Australia’s Hannah Yin and Hiya Shah won the top prize of $500; and the runners up, Russia’s Maria Ivanova Konstantinova and UAE’s Johan Sanju Sebastian, won the $250 prize each. Students from more than 19 countries and across five continents participated in the short video contest. The winning videos will be showcased at IFRPI’s website and social media channels.
To watch Alicia, Mariana, Claudia and Frida’s winning video, please click here.
To watch all the winning videos, click here.
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The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) seeks sustainable solutions for ending hunger and poverty. IFPRI was established in 1975 to identify and analyze alternative national and international strategies and policies for meeting the food needs of the developing world, with particular emphasis on low-income countries and on the poorer groups in those countries Visit: www.ifpri.org