Youth Breaking Barriers
In March, NL Eats orchestrated a virtual conference with support of Food Animator Lindsay Newman. As a week-long event, Breaking Barriers to Food Insecurity focused on youth sharing information to bring forward fresh solutions to food issues. Through virtual panel discussions and mentorship, youth and organizations working on food issues came together, and with over 12,000 social media views of the sessions to date, Breaking Barriers will continue to inspire action.
Participants were inspired to think about innovative ways in which they too can get involved in finding solutions. Five evenings of invited speakers provided insights into the work being done and specific issues needing attention.
NL Eats members Hilary Hennessey, Kunal Laungani, and Lindsay Newman welcomed Food First NL CEO, Josh Smee, as Keynote Speaker on the first evening of the conference.
On the weekend of March 19-21st, youth participants (aged 15-30) took in several sessions including how to create a business plan and a panel discussing support available to new entrepreneurs. Pitch participants also had the opportunity to take part in mentorship coaching to help shape their business ideas. The conference was capped off with a pitch competition, where participants brought forward their own plans for addressing food security issues.
The award for the top place went to Yahia Aly, who developed a business plan about an app called FoodDate, which addresses the crucial issue of food waste. The app helps users to track their food by sending push notifications to remind the user of their food’s upcoming best-before date, as well as suggests recipes, storage tips, and has a donation portal where users can donate their unused groceries to other users.
The Entrepreneur Supports Panel on Sunday was moderated by Lindsay Newman & Kunal Laungani. Panelists Ted Cadigan (YMCA), Roseanne Leonard (NL CBDC), Enaya AbdElGaber (MUN Centre for Entrepreneurship), and Scott Andrews (Futurepreneur) provided a wealth of information on financial and mentoring supports available to entrepreneurs.
Many people made this event possible. Conference coordinators were backed by a team of 4 moderators, 3 judges, 2 mentors, 9 speakers, 4 panelists, and 3 pitch participants. Community partners involved volunteers and staff from NL Eats, Food First NL, NL Association of CBDCs, MUNSU, and Rising Youth. Forty individuals registered for the event, and many more checked in to view one or more of the conference sessions, as shown by the thousands of ongoing views.
In the words of one of the pitch competition participants, “Thank you for all of the amazing things that I got to experience within this conference! It was truly a pleasure, and I learned so much that I can carry with me throughout my career!”
Kudos to Lindsay and the whole conference team on a job well done!
Want to know more? You can check out the recorded sessions now on the NL Eats Facebook page.