GLOBAL SHAPERS TT - Driving Dialogue and Inspiring Change

An interview with Stefanie Gouveia

Brooke Hadeed, Jade Murray, and Sofia Rajkumarsingh from the Global Shapers Community, Port of Spain (POS) hub, sat down with the CSR to talk about their recent project on Food Security and Regenerative Agriculture. The project hosted a diverse group of 27 participants and held a series of workshops that focused on improving production by teaching farmers business management and sound agricultural practices.

Tell us about the organization Global Shapers Community, and what do they do?

BH- The Global Shapers Community was born out of the World Economic Forum, created 11 years ago and our local hub in Trinidad & Tobago was formed 9 years ago. It’s a network of young people, between the ages of 18-30, working in their communities that self-organize to create projects that have an impact on a local, regional, and global level.

When we say global, to really get the breath of it, the community has 15,000 members from 150 countries around the world so global is emphatic. There are 6 other hubs in the Caribbean as well, so we try to assert our presence as a region.

Being a part of the Global Shapers has been such an experience. In September, Jade and I were invited to Geneva, Switzerland to the wealth headquarters to meet other leaders from other hubs. Jade can jump in as well to this point (Brooke laughingly signals to her colleague)

JM- Brooke pretty much summarized it. We’re groups of young persons that self-organize to drive dialogue, action, and change on pressing issues facing our communities and are guided by impact areas given by the Global Shapers headquarters.

Our POS hub recently did a survey and selected three impact areas for this curatorship year: reskilling for the future, building inclusive communities and health & wellbeing, which we are really excited about.

As Brooke mentioned, we were invited to the 2022 Annual Curators Meeting in Geneva, the home of Global Shapers. There were close to 500 persons representing different countries and for me, it was refreshing being there as you really got a sense of the globality and that we belong to such an impactful community. It was also very inspiring to see other young persons come together to create much needed projects for their communities and realizing that we are all facing variations of very similar problems.

As a Global Shaper, you seek to address pertinent issues facing your community. Your team recently held workshops on Food Security & Regenerative Agriculture. Can you tell us what that is?

BH- Food Security in basic terms is the availability of food to a given population and the ability of that population to access food. We are fortunate here in Trinidad & Tobago to have food in our groceries and markets, but the reality is that 80-90% of what we consume is imported. When you go through a cataclysmic event like Covid-19, which wasn’t just a health event but a massive economic shift, exposing the vulnerability of supply chains, you realize the food we eat may not be available forever and is becoming increasingly harder for certain groups of society to access.

We wanted to explore a way of bringing down the consumption of foreign foods and replacing it with local foods that are nutritious, well adapted for growth, a beneficial source of income for farmers and affordable for communities to access.

We didn’t just want to find a way to increase production but to help farmers produce more by producing better, which is where Regenerative Agriculture comes in.

Regenerative Agriculture is like a rehabilitation approach to food systems where farmers aren’t just using land to grow but putting back into the land, making it stronger and more resilient. The majority of agriculture practised in Trinidad is monocrop but regenerative agriculture involves diversifying crops, covercropping, composting, integrating animals, and agroforestry. This process brings farming back to nature and shows that it’s a perfect system giving us everything we need to grow food, protect against natural disasters, sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, help mitigate against climate change and allow us to grow healthier and better food for our local population.

How does the issue of food security affect or impact our society?

JM- As Brooke mentioned those startling figures on food importation, food production worldwide also accounts for nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. So as a sector, finding different ways to reduce our emissions is really important. Imagine becoming more self-reliant in food production, becoming sustainable and regenerative and also having low carbon emissions, that’s a win-win for all of us. To reach a place where we consume more nutritious and sustainable food will have to come from a culture switch, where consumers start wanting to eat more locally produced foods rather than the foreign food to which our palates are accustomed.

BH- Yes, it’s a topic that really touches on every note. There are the obvious environmental impacts, there are the economic impacts-we want to be able to grow this other sector of our economy and we also don’t want to be spending as much scarce foreign exchange on imported food. But, it’s social as well, because for people who are struggling more and more to access their basic needs, imported food is getting more expensive and it’s not as great nutrition wise compared to fresh produce that we can source locally. So, it hits at several levels.

As indicated, this is a relevant topic so tell us about the genesis of the project-how was the idea formed?

BH - It’s been a long road to get here, nearly 2 years. What we do at Shapers is, once a year, we discuss strategies and ideas for the year ahead. This was one of the ideas I put forward at a strategy session - to address the issue of food security and it happened to get the most votes.

It’s been a long process of design, development, and research as we wanted to learn more about food security & regenerative agriculture before jumping into a project. No one on the team had a strong background in agriculture. There were some environmentalists and members who had taken courses in permaculture or regenerative agriculture but no one that was really an expert. It’s important to do the research and delve into the problem of why it exists and what are the best solutions we can provide.

Also, through the Global Shapers community we were able to take part in a project incubator series through the Climate Reality Project, a US based environmental organization. We went through a 5-series workshop where they allowed us to develop our project idea, brainstorm with each other, bounce around ideas with people from other hubs and their projects around the world. We came out of that with a solid project proposal, allowing us to apply for a grant, which at the time we didn’t win. However, with persistence, we were given a larger grant 6 months later. Finally, we had the resources to carry out this project.

Can you share what were some of the objectives for the workshop? What was the Global Shapers hoping to achieve?

BH- In partnering with Wa Samaki Ecosystems, we wanted to teach not only the principles and practices of regenerative agriculture but give participants the tools to scale up their production because if they are choosing farming as their occupation, they have to make a living and create a sustainable livelihood for themselves and their families. So, in addition to practical agricultural teaching, we wanted to teach them about business.

We had a series of six workshops: Permaculture design, Water Management, Composting, creating Syntropy Beds and later in the program we did Marketing & Distribution and Access to Finance.

A unique component of the project was that a part of our budget was allocated to microgrants. The participants were able to take what they learnt, create their own project proposal, submit for review, and potentially win funds to run their own project. This focused on the scalable and sustainable aspect of the project.

JM- This has been an exciting process for me as we are currently in the process of reviewing microgrant applications. One person proposed a community composting bank, addressing the need for more home/community gardening and the lack of nutritious soil. The second idea was to create community gardening plots around Trinidad. To see these ideas is amazing…coming out of the pandemic…it should prompt us to reflect on how we can make our own local communities self-sufficient and self-sustainable. I am so glad that this project helped inspire people to start thinking about how they can start implementing these ideas.

BH-We also had down as one of our objectives ‘to create a supportive network’ but what it became in actuality…we didn’t expect. The participants have become a community and supportive network for each other. We created a WhatsApp group, and they are always sharing information and looking to help each other. It really created this bonding experience.

For me, the standout of the project was to see how they all came together and formed this great relationship and continue to share different courses and resources with each other. It’s really been amazing.

What is the importance of engaging with local farmers on Food Security?

SR- I joined Shapers while the project was ongoing but what I noticed was that it helped the farmers learn new skills, touching on the impact area of reskilling for the future. Yes, they have farming skills but it also taught them the regenerative aspects of it, showing them how to market their products and set up their businesses. We also had speakers from Market Movers and Unqueue to assist with marketing and distribution practices.

BH - This is not a new topic; food security has been in the newspapers and was very topical during the Agri Expo a couple months ago. It is important because farmers are the ones on the ground, in the soil, creating food for us. Trinidad is a blessed environment with year-round fertility and diversity for our produce and we should be tapping into that.

We need to be giving our farmers the tools and education they need but it can’t just stop there… It's down to those who support them; we need consumers who will support local produce, we need banks and financial institutions that will support farmers and the long-term process of creating a regenerative farm. They are not growing cash crops, where you will see a financial return within a year, two years, three years, there needs to be long-term thinking for this to be successful.

It is a whole system effort, but it starts with giving support to farmers and also encouraging young people to pursue this as a viable career. That’s one of the reasons why food import constitutes 90% of our consumption - because agriculture has really dwindled as an industry.

It’s great to see young people using aquaponics, hydroponics and being involved in regenerative agriculture. They are trying to do a lot of new stuff and we just need to support them as much as we can.

Participants in the Global Shapers 'Food for You Program' at the Wa Samaki classroom

Participants of the Global Shapers Food for You Program preparing a syntropic bed during on of our workshops on Syntropic farming

To find out more on the Global Shapers Community Port of Spain hub, head to https://www.globalshapers.org/