About us
Wageningen Youth Institute is part of Wageningen University & Research and the World Food Prize Foundation in the US. With the aim of inspiring and activating high school students worldwide in global food security issues. "How do we feed the world in a fair, sustainable and healthy way in 2050 when the world population rises to 10 billion?"
Mission
In 1986, Norman Borlaug (Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1970) founded The World Food Prize: An annual $250.000 award that he hoped would both highlight and inspire breakthrough achievements in improving the quality, quantity and availability of food in the world, and which is now often referred to as the “Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture.”
Dr. Borlaug also developed the World Food Prize Youth Institutes, which engages high school and university students in the fight to end hunger and introduces them to potential academic and career paths in agriculture and related fields. Each year, around 200 exceptional high school students from across the United States and other countries are selected to participate in the three-day Global Youth Institute in Des Moines, Iowa, hosted by the World Food Prize Foundation. Students can qualify themselves via their Youth Institute.
Wageningen University & Research (WUR) hosted the first Youth Institute outside the USA in Wageningen, The Netherlands in 2018. From that year onwards, the Wageningen Youth Institute has been organizing a finals every year in March, challenging students to look for solutions to one of the greatest challenges we face in the world: global food security.