29 Hours From Home — How Did I Get Here?
To keep myself busy during my 29 hours of travel from Vermont to India, I downloaded 19 articles, five podcasts, and one Bollywood movie in preparation for my eight-week internship in Chennai, India.
To understand how I got here — sitting in a packed plane, trying (in vain) to catch up on thousands of years of Indian culture and history — we need to rewind a couple of years.
Growing up in Vermont, farms and food systems have always been a part of my life. They’ve only been in the periphery of my attention, though, until my sophomore year of high school, when I traded Vermont’s green pastures for Iowa’s sprawling fields of maize. Based on a research paper I wrote the previous summer, I was selected to join more than 200 other high school students from around the world at the 2016 Global Youth Institute (GYI), a three-day program hosted by the World Food Prize in Des Moines, Iowa.
I’d never heard of the World Food Prize before writing my paper, but upon arriving at the conference, I was quickly introduced to the work of Iowa native Dr. Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, and food security hero. Dr. Borlaug founded the World Food Prize to honor the contributions of international leaders committed to improving global food security, and the prize is likened to the Nobel Peace Prize for agriculture.
Leading figures in the worldwide fight against hunger attend the World Food Prize gathering and those attending GYI are able to eat meals and brush shoulders with experts, scientists, activists, and fellow impassioned peers from around the world. When I attended GYI, I listened to a keynote conference by Tom Vilsack, then-United States Secretary of Agriculture, presented my paper to Florence Chenoweth, Liberia’s and Africa’s first woman Minister of Agriculture, and was moved by Former President of Malawi Joyce Banda’s speech on women’s empowerment. My mind was blown as I realized the scale of worldwide hunger and malnutrition, and I was absolutely inspired when listening and talking with people who’ve dedicated their lives to finding solutions to this complex, pressing problem.
Empowered by my experience and the knowledge gained from attending GYI, I committed myself to joining the ranks of these impressive hunger fighters, and in my remaining years in high school, I sought to bring these issues to my own school community. I wish to explore the field of international development in college, so I decided to apply for the Borlaug-Ruan international internship, a program created from the generosity of philanthropist John Ruan under the vision of Dr. Borlaug. The internship, organized by the World Food Prize, empowers and provides an immersive, hands-on experience for the upcoming generation of hunger fighters to work in leading international centers addressing food security.
I am honored to be one of 24 Borlaug-Ruan interns this year, and will be spending the next eight weeks of my summer at the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), in Chennai, India!
Some background on MSSRF:
Professor MS Swaminathan is a revered leader in ensuring food security in India. Considered as the father of the Green Revolution in India and winner of the first ever World Food Prize, Professor Swaminathan introduced high-yield wheat and rice varieties so that Indian farmers could produce enough quantities of crop to sustain themselves. His humility and clear vision shone through his work that always put the farmer first. Professor Swaminathan founded the MSSRF to focus on the next phase of feeding India’s massive population: promoting accessibility of nutritious foods. With this goal in mind, the center’s programs work to address the many intertwining factors involved — including the empowerment of women, sustainability, technology, micro-biology, and more. MSSRF’s approach is “pro-poor, pro-women, and pro-nature.”
As part of the Food Security program at MSSRF, I will be writing a research paper that I’ll present in Iowa this October. I’ll also be documenting my research and experience through many more blog and social media posts (you can find me on Facebook here and on Instagram, @andiepinga)! I’m ecstatic and beyond grateful for the opportunity to work at such an innovative center in a wonderful city — and can’t wait to share my adventures, triumphs, pitfalls… all of it, with y’all!
