Engaging Youth in Urban Agriculture: The Power of Growing Out of the Margins

Urban agriculture presents a unique pathway to engage and nurture youth from diverse communities, offering dynamic spaces and opportunities for enhanced wellbeing, learning, skills development and community involvement whilst re-framing relationships and inspiring connections to food and nature. By implementing creative, bold and radical approaches of youth engagement within these spaces, urban agriculture can become both a vibrant field that feeds communities and a powerful tool for holistic education, empowerment, agency and positive food futures. Diversifying and enhancing pathways and models can increase inclusion and deepen lasting positive impacts. During this "Engaging Youth in Urban Agriculture" interactive session, examples of diverse models will be explored and discussed. This session will highlight some valuable case studies and varied approaches learned from cities across Canada, US and Brazil, focused on youth engagement, land use across the city and communities facing socio-economic challenges. The aim is to collectively look at alternative models that can harness the transformative potential of interconnected work engaging youth from diverse communities in urban agriculture. Encouraging insightful exchange, questions, examining how it fits with current work and local context and concluding with discussion of proposed actionable recommendations.