Giving Compass' Take:

• Sujardin Syarifuddin is an alumnus of the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition and works to build food awareness among young people through education. 

• What would be the most challenging aspect of persuading young people to care about the food system? Where could donors fit into this mission? 

• Read more about why youth are going to be the future of the global food system. 

Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) Alumni Sujardin Syarifuddin believes that increasing opportunities for innovation, research, and collaboration for youth is essential for building the next generation of food and agriculture leaders. Founder of the GreenNation Youth Project in Indonesia, Syarifuddin works to educate young people on environmental issues and increase their capacity to take action to resolve environmental problems.

His project, The Miraculous Moringa, was a finalist in the 2013 BCFN YES! Competition, demonstrating how consumption of Moringa oleifera leaves could help prevent nutritional deficiency and malnutrition in children under five.

Food Tank had the opportunity to talk with Syarifuddin and discovered how the agriculture education in his childhood helped pave the way toward a career in food and agriculture research and entrepreneurship.

Food Tank: When did you decide that you wanted to become involved in building a better food system?

Syarifuddin: When my team and I reached the final of BCFN Young Earth Solutions in 2013, I never thought that the issues surrounding the food system or sustainable agriculture could change my perspective about certain things — like why the number of obese people outnumbered children suffering from severe starvation and malnutrition, or why more and more young people seem to be discouraged to be active in participating in agriculture. Since then, and while working on my “The Miraculous Moringa” idea with my team, I tried to increase public awareness about these issues in the best way I knew how — by writing about them.

Read the full article about food awareness among young people by at Food Tank.