My Experience: Representing Nepal in Global Think Tank

Youth Legend’s USA based partner organization International Connector was looking for a teen from different corners of the world for their paid project with biggest research institute of the world – Institute for The Future. We had a responsibility of finding the right candidate from Nepal who would give their best for the project. After our open call, 2 Nepali teens were selected for the virtual project. This is the story about the experience from one of the selected participant. – Shilpa Bhandari)

Well, many people asked me about “Future Food Project” which is why I finally thought of writing about it.

International Connector(IC) and Institute for the future (IFTF) were together to study the FUTURE OF FOOD in the world through the lens of talented-inspiring-global youth. International Connector (IC) works with innovative high-aspiring youth worldwide to help organizations navigate the change in business and preferences stemming from the next generations. IC had teamed with Institute for the future (IFTF), an independent, non-profit research organization that helps all kinds of organizations make the futures they want.

They had called for application from all over the world. For Nepal, International Connector’s Partner Organization Youth Legend was responsible for selecting the best candidate.

Participants were youth from Afghanistan, Albania, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Nederland, France, Germany, Iraq, Kenya, Mexico, Montenegro, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, South Korea, Taiwan, Tunisia, Uganda and United States. Participants were expected to let the company know who they are, what they believe, and more than that, represent their nationality and culture.

The project was divided into two think tanks. Participants were allowed to brainstorm, create, add videos, photos, posters, texts, drawings, etc. on it.Virtual meetings were also held for increasing communication among participants.

Despite large variations of time zone, participants tried their best to manage their schedule for meetings. We used to have puzzles on think tanks. First think tank had three puzzles viz. Past, Present and Future.

This is how our board initially looked like:

We had amazing conversations on first think tank. We talked about how our relation with food changed in last few years, what’s our present relation with food, and what future do we behold for food.

We were glad to find few common stories like problems of food while moving to another state for study, problem of obesity, effects of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) and so on. We also focused on role of government in solving problems of food industry resulted due to gap between rich and poor. We had seven millennial catalysts from IC working with us, and they are amazing humans!

On second think tank, we focused more on globalization. We talked about our biggest lesson from first think tank. We also talked about a signal in our society that might change the future of food. We discussed on what international companies can enable as well as contribute for the future of food.

3D printers and food computers were widely discussed topic. We explained why we see the future of food in the way we see it. We talked on effects of packaged food as well as food wastes.

The experiences that we were lucky to have on think tanks were really mind-blowing.

If I was not a participant of food tank, I wouldn’t have learnt to enjoy the cultural diversity as well as food variation of world. What really inspired me was people posting about their cultural foods on social networking sites like Instagram and promoting it.

On our think tank, there were people who ate beef, and on the other hand, there were people like Nepalese who worshiped cow.

While talking about globalization, we also examined its effect on decreasing agriculture. We also talked on how local experts should be encouraged to be part of food companies for letting those companies know about local problems.

We talked about food startups like “Food on Call” and “Metro Tarkari”.

We were totally delighted to share recipes of Nepali popular food.

The best part of think tank involved sharing of surreal stories of Nepal like craze for MoMo, trend of providing food to children for coming to School, learning about weather from satellite images, effect of natural disasters like earthquake and forest fire on food and reckons of Nepalese youth regarding agriculture.

Platforms like these broaden our mind remarkably.

I am grateful to International Connector, Institute for the future and Youth Legend for providing us an opportunity to represent Nepal and Nepalese culture.

Participants from different parts of world were mind-boggling, and we express our sincere gratitude to them for sharing their experiences on think tank.

Food can connect everyone in this planet.

Jai Nepal!

About the Writer

SHILPA BHANDARI

Shilpa wants to establish a place in Nepal where students prefer “sciencing” rather than “studying”. Shilpa believes in grabbing every opportunity and working hard after achieving it. She completed her high school with Science major and she aspires to be an Astrophysicist.