Fordham University London Center & Mentee
Beginning the month of October to November 2021, I participated in a Peer-to-Peer Learning Through SDGs hosted by Fordham University London Center in collaboration with Mentee Global Organization. This project brought together young people from Fordham University London Center’s study abroad students and MENTEE’s participants from international marginalized communities to explore Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and create a collaborative online project. This peer learning project offered the participants a platform to meet each other, develop intra-cultural relationships and awareness while researching a sustainable development goal together and prepare a reflective and educational presentation on the select SDG
Being a Mentor at Mentee Global Organization, I was privilege to get an opportunity to participate in this project where I was paired with a student from Fordham University to undertake this project. Together with my partner, Katarina Fox from New York, USA, we researched SDG 12 on Responsible Consumption and Production. We particular focused on global food waste with comparative analysis of Nairobi and New York. From our research, it was evident that food wastage is huge both in USA and in Kenya. We found that in New York, USA;
- About 18% of all waste in New York comes from food waste ending up in landfills, and
- About 68% of all the food discarded is still edible, according to nycfoodpolicy.org.
- The majority of this food waste is coming from manufacturers, grocery stores, and restaurants, though there is also food waste coming from farms in terms of fruits and vegetables
- There is lack of consumption in relation to amount of food being produced and distributed
- Lack of awareness/understanding on how much food is being wasted, how much money this problem is costing, and how this is impacting food insecurity further.
We also found that in Nairobi, Kenya
- There is no proper post-harvest losses prevention mechanism to curb food losses.
- There is lack of understanding on how food wastage impacts on food security.
- There is poor attitude towards food preservation. People preferring fresh food thereby not
making effort to preserve or consume food that is almost approaching its shelf
life.
A number of solutions we came up with include;
- Tackling Food Wastage at Consumer and Production Levels
- Investing in Scientific and Technological Capacity
- Low-tech innovations
- Agricultural Diversification and Diversification of Livelihood Sources.
The project culminated into a virtual certificate award meeting hosted by Fordham University to appreciate the participants for their dedication and commitment
Here is the padlet for ALL the project outputs; https://padlet.com/lzwickert/lzl08jvs4td73sp4
ODUOR KEVIN 