Europe

Barilla Finances 20,000€ Worth of Scholarships

The Italian Food Industry Launches the 5th Edition of YES! , a Worldwide Project-Based Competition

June 23rd, 2016
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The Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) has backed the active participation of young students and researchers from all around the globe since 2012, the year Young Earth Solutions (YES!) was launched. The initiative aims to give young people the space to broadcast their ideas about creating a healthier and sustainable food system.

The reckless use and production of food and resources, with half of the global population characterized by an unbalanced relationship with food are problems requiring concrete and immediate interventions right across the food supply chain.

BCFN considers young minds to be an indispensable resource for tackling these demanding and pressing issues, by finding real solutions that can really make a difference. The YES! , launched in 2012 by the BCFN aims to reward the best ideas about food and sustainability. The international competition “assesses Projects with an international jury according to their social impact, innovation, originality and feasibility and the best win a monetary prize to implement them.

The competition is aimed at young PhD, postdoc researchers and students under the age of 35. Barilla believes that the issue of how to guarantee healthy and sustainable food for future generations is extremely intricate. Therefore it asks for the commitment of players coming from different contexts and boasting different skills. This is why the competition is open to such a large audience and internationally.

The First prize is a research grant worth €20,000 which will be awarded to a one-year project promoting the environmental, economic and/or social sustainability of the agro-food system. The jury will favor multi-disciplinary research which integrates the dimension of food in a much wider landscape of research spanning all sectors.

The deadline to submit the project proposal is July 27th. The winner will be selected at the Seventh International Forum on Food and Nutrition to be held at Bocconi University in Milan on the 30th November and the 1st December 2016. The finalists will be invited to present their projects, individually or as a team, both to a board of experts and the public attending the Forum.

The YES! Research Competition is an extraordinary space where new generations of sustainability experts are made. Ideas from different people with different cultural background can be analyzed and developed freely, bridging cultural gap through one common scope: the creation of a sustainable future for mankind.

References:

Cultural Diplomacy News
Giorgio Malvermi, CD News