On 13 August 2020, the Council for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) and Scaling Up Nutrition  Civil Society Alliance for Cambodia (SUN CSA Cambodia) led by Hellen Keller International (HKI) in collaboration with the Youth Nutrition Campions (YNC), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and GIZ organized a Youth Nutrition Champions Forum, which aimed to promote active youth participation in improving nutrition in Cambodia.

The event aimed to create opportunities for youth to voice their concerns, express their opinions, expectations as well as solutions, seeking to improve nutrition in the country. Their views and insights will be reflected in the 2020 SUN Joint Annual Assessment of Cambodia, which will be submited to the Global SUN Movement in October.

Cambodia is one of the 61 countries around the globe who are signatories to the SUN Movement. The SUN Movement aims to help the world to achieve SDG 2 for eradicating hunger by 2030.

According to Dr Iean Russell, speaking on behalf of FAO and the SUN UN Network, the forum placed the significance on youth and on engaging them in helping deal with many challenges in ending all forms of malnutrition.

Even though youth were included in some meetings in the past, their voices were not integrated into the decision-making process.

“Now it is not us talking to them, but us listening to their views,” said Dr Iean Russell, emphasizing the difference between this event and those conducted in the past. 

Around 40 youth from the YNC and different universities in Phnom Penh participated in the event. They were divided into six smaller groups to conduct a series of exercises. Each group discussed three main areas, designed to meaningfully inform the performance assessment for the SUN Movement in Cambodia. The first section was to collect the views of youth by rating the current processes related to scaling-up nutrition in Cambodia. Questions ranged from youth engagement in national conversations, how well policies and laws translated into actions for better nutrition, and how well youth utilized the media to amplify key messages, raising awareness and promoting actions to deal with malnutrition in Cambodia. The second question was designed to set priorities for spending funds for better nutrition at commune level. Participants had to discuss and reach consensus to allocate funds among the sector-led and joint priority areas identified in the Second National Strategy for Food Security and Nutrition (2^nd NSFSN) 2019-2023. Finally, the last question allowed them to provide recommendations, covering solutions and actions on how scaling up nutrition in Cambodia can be improved.

What are the Youth Nutrition Champions?

The Youth Nutrition Champions were established in 2018 by HKI and SUN CSA Cambodia, having Ms Chhun Bormey, the Global Youth Leader for Nutrition For Cambodia, as the leader.

The goal of this project is to engage Cambodian youth in discussions around food security and nutrition, amplify their voices, and help them to build the skills, knowledge and connections to become agents for positive change.

According to Ms Gwyneth Cotes, Country Director of HKI, “this small group of committed individuals have attracted the interest of people throughout government, international organizations, and the general public. Now, they are having the opportunity to enter into dialogue with the highest levels of government.”

“The YNC is a diverse, interesting group of young adults. They include farmers, chefs, teachers, scientists, nutritionists, maybe even a future lawyer… and each of them brings their own interests and perspectives. We need to make sure we are really listening,” she added.

As the leader of the YNC, Ms Chhun Bormey, represented the interests of youth at the event. In her remarks, she requested CARD to consider three main suggestions from youth. They included:

• Allow YNC representatives to participate in decision-making processes in order for them to learn and to gain experience on policy dialogue and able to contribute with their inputs to the development of food security and nutrition strategies.
• Allow the YNC representatives to participate in different platforms and workshops related to food security and nutrition organized by CARD as well as other partners.
• CARD to kindly coordinate participation of YNC representatives in various mechanisms prepared by sub-national level government mechanism for food security and nutrition.

Policy support for youth engagement and commitment to improve nutrition, food security and safe and healthy diets in Cambodia

HE  Deputy Prime Minister Yim Chhay Ly, Chairman of CARD, emphasized that, “youth should have physical and mental strength, intellectual, consciousness, ethics, value, and skills so that they will potentially develop their family and broader society. However, in order to get these qualities, youth should have good nutrition – the crucial basic need for their healthy lives.”

The Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) recognizes youth as being like the life blood of the country. The social and economic development of the country will be handled by them in the near future.

Having recognized all these facts, the RGC set its long-term vision to mobilize all available effort to contribute positively to youth development and provide them with opportunities to develop their potential, to access education, employment and health services, to participate in decision making and to contribute to family, community, national and global development.

In this line, CARD, as the coordination body responsible for food security and nutrition, prepared the 2^nd NSFSN 2019–2023, which envisions that all Cambodian people have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food at all times, to meet their dietary needs and preferences and optimize the utilization of this food for a healthy and productive life. The Strategy identifies gender and youth as critical cross-cutting issues to be mainstreamed in the nutrition and food security sector in order for youth to voice their opinions to shape their future.

HE Yim Chhay Ly, urged all relevant stakeholders and especially youth, to continue to cooperate and join with CARD to “end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition, and ensure sustainable agricultural development in Cambodia.”

“We need collective efforts to help Cambodian youth to have a good nutritional status,” he said.

At the same time, HE Yim Chhay Ly added that, “youth should participate in various events related to nutrition in order to gain understanding and knowledge and provide inputs to decision-making processes in developing the nutrition and food security strategy. Youth participation in this sector is a key intervention to break the cycle of malnutrition in the country, especially in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. Knowledge gained through engagement in this sector will also help youth to shift their behavior toward healthy diet and healthy lifestyle.”