As we reported earlier this week, superstar high school student Nosa Akol appeared on a panel at Wednesday’s USDA Borlaug Symposium in Washington D.C., to speak about how her experiences with The New York Youth Institute, the CITIZEN U program at Broome County Cornell Cooperative Extension, and other 4-H program at Cornell like Career Explorations, quite literally set her life on a new course. The émigré from South Sudan was inspired to explore micro-farming in her native country as a mechanism for helping women and young girls overcome gender-based violence, illiteracy and poverty, as part of an essay for the World Food Prize Youth Institute. She was actually able to present her research directly to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack (pictured with Nosa, above) during a chance encounter – in which Vilsack interrupted Nosa in order to fetch his wife, who apparently has a special interest in South Sudan and is currently engaged in women’s empowerment projects there. They may have opportunities to collaborate in some way on these issues this summer, as Nosa will be returning to Washington for a Wallace-Carver Fellowship/Internship at USDA.
The USDA Borlaug Symposium was held in conjunction with other events celebrating the centennial of the birth of Norman Borlaug, Nobel laureate, father of the “Green Revolution” and founder of The World Food Prize. Several CALS faculty, staff and students were also involved in a series of meetings in Ciudad Obregón, Mexico, including a technical workshop organized by the Cornell-based Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) and the Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security. The International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) and Biology Fortified also produced a fun video tribute to the late great scientist.
