Youth Knowledge Hub (YKH) PROJECT in North & Central India co-funded by the European Union to be launched in November 2022.

Under the Fairtrade strategy 2021-25 Framework, the key strategic pillars have been earmarked to follow targets addressing the small farmers’ and workers’ empowerment, growth, innovation, and launch pad for the future.As one of the deliverables, Fairtrade aims to develop a scalable and dynamic model that recognizes the role of youth to drive empowerment and decent income through a sustainable farming model that focuses on building greater resilience and diversifying their role into multi-domains to progress towards better social, economic and environmental standards through a sustainable approach.

The Youth Knowledge Hub is a platform for the next generations to understand and develop skills and awareness on changes, approaches, and possibilities to address the needs of their producer members, communities, and other associated. This is a virtual and a physical platform both based on the need of youth members to be designed and further run by them, supported by Fairtrade. This is an initiative in the region, which are to be considered as extended support of Fairtrade to represent in local, regional, and national initiatives to leverage more resources for their upliftment.

Under the NAPP strategy aligned to Fairtrade International Goals and objectives, the plan for sustainable communities is one of the priorities for the coming years. As a Fairtrade mandate to focus on empowering the small farmers and workers in a long run, the need for youth to get sensitized, and increased awareness and skills on varied themes is an immediate need to enhance the next generation farming community with improved capacities for sustainability through empowerment.

The Youth Knowledge Hub is co-funded by the European Union and will ideally focus on addressing various needs related to increasing awareness of agriculture and its supply chain, income livelihood opportunities, technology interventions, scheme-related information for scaling up resources, climate change, etc., This project will be implemented by Fairtrade through various activities in its 5-year strategy plan.

The first pilot batch will be launched in North and Central India where the initial pre-analysis meeting has been conducted with the producer organisations.  Currently, 22 participants from 07 SPOs have given their consent to be part of the hub which will be launched in November 2022.

 The main objective of the Youth Knowledge Hub is to :

1. Create a virtual and physical platform for selected Youth to develop a repository of information related to agriculture and its supply chains, income livelihood opportunities for individuals, producer members, and communities, environmental sustainability, and climate adaptation technique initiatives among others.
2. Improve the skills required by the youth to set up an agribusiness portfolio for supporting their producer group, and their community as a whole and grow as Trainers in the long run to support the members.
3. Raise awareness on available schemes and develop a compendium – on both local and central govt. supports available. To come up with initiatives to develop linkages with respective authorities and take benefit of resources available at local and regional levels. Fairtrade NAPP will support in leveraging the national level linkage support.
4. Create an opportunity in increasing the usage of technology in agriculture to increase the potential in terms of yield, and management and leverage the resources available from all domains.
5. Become a Fairtrade Youth Champion to be able to lead the Producer Organisation soon and to be a part of the Fairtrade movement through an active role and participation in National Networks and International platforms.

Way forward

1. Creation of Youth Profile through Youth Profiling exercise
2. Identification & Selection of Youth Monitors from each respective Producer Organisation for various thematic roles.
3. Conduct activities related to awareness, skill development, learnings, and advisories with the selected youth Monitors;
4. Launch the concept of Youth Knowledge Hub – through the identification of key 5 themes of expertise to be led by Youth Monitors;

• Climate change and environment
• Agri-business and Agri preneurship
• Access to finance,
• Agri technology and innovation,
• Social media, and digital expertise

4. Conduct regular meetings, training, exposures, and other initiatives to develop the workstream under each theme identified.
5. Periodical review of each domain to understand the progress and the way forward;
6. Reporting of key output, outcome, and impacts of any initiatives undertaken;
7. Sharing the learnings and outcomes with external stakeholders.

Key Impacts:

1. A list of youth monitors or leaders representing their Producer Organisations and being the change agent.
2. Understanding of key themes by the Youth, which will help Producer Organisations leverage the knowledge and uplift their social, economic, and environmental aspects.
3. Structured information flow for all the Producer Organisations in key areas related to Production, Social networking, Trade, Access to Information etc.
4. Available in-house master trainers – who could be the change agent for the Producer Organisation at their operational area;
5. Represent Producer Organisation on various external platforms to increase its visibility.
6. Youth Monitors will become an extended arm for supporting NAPP initiatives in the long run.