TST BOCES Students Compete in Area 2 Regional Competition at Delhi, NY
Zoe Anderson, a senior at Trumansburg High School and member of the New Visions Life Sciences, Class of 2010 at TST BOCES was selected to serve as a delegate at the Global Youth Institute next month. Zoe and her teacher/mentor, Michele Sutton will travel to DesMoine, Iowa where they will participate in the program which is being sponsored by the World Food Prize Foundation.
Ms. Sutton registered Zoe and her fourteen classmates to participate in the qualifying New York Youth Institute which was held on September 19, 2009 at Cornell University. In a class assignment, Ms. Sutton’s students read The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs, chose a food security issue and wrote an essay where they presented a solution to their chosen problem.
At the New York Youth Institute, students presented their essays in a round-table forum where they received feedback on their work from Dr. Per Pinstrup-Anderson, H.E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy at Cornell University and a panel of Humphrey fellows. Of the more than sixty registrants, Zoe was one of four selected by the committee to serve as a delegate at the Global Youth Institute. Zoe discussed how granting property rights would impact food security issues in Guatemala in her 5,000 word essay. Another area student, Heather Whitaker (also from Trumansburg and TST New Visions) was selected as an alternate to attend the Global Youth Institute.
At the Global Youth Institute, Zoe will again present her paper and discuss her findings – this time with international experts and her peers in roundtable discussions. Each discussion group of seven to nine students is led by three distinguished global leaders in science, industry and policy. Student papers are subsequently published in the Youth Institute Proceedings and will be available online.
Throughout the three-day program, student and teacher delegates participate in the Borlaug Dialogue, a “davos-style” dialogue which brings together over 500 international experts and policy leaders from 65 countries to address cutting-edge challenges in food security and international development. Delegates to the Global Youth Institute also attend the World Food Prize Laureate Award Ceremony in the historic Iowa State Capitol, as the “Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture” is awarded in recognition of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.
By participating in the Global Youth Institute held in Iowa, Zoe will be eligible to apply for a prestigious Borlaug-Ruan International Internship, an all-expenses-paid, eight-week hands-on experience, working with world-renowned scientists and policymakers at leading research centers in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
All expenses for this unique opportunity are paid for by Cornell University and the World Food Prize Organization. For more information about the Global Youth Institute visit http://www.worldfoodprize.org/youth/index.htm