The EADRSI network (Education for Rural Development and International Solidarity) of Occitania organized, on May 25, 2021, a day of solidarity bringing together nearly 300 young people from agricultural schools in Occitania and Madagascar.
The EADRSI network was born in 2012 from a partnership between Fert and the CNEAP. In Occitania, each year, a dozen agricultural schools organize a day of solidarity in partnership with Fert and its partner Fekama, a federation of agricultural colleges in Madagascar.
This year the theme was “Food for solidarity here and there”.
Given the health context, the day of solidarity was organized in each school to mark a year of investment by young people. Indeed, throughout the year, nearly 300 students addressed the topic of solidarity food by organizing solidarity activities and participating in awareness workshops.
Through workshops on fair trade, water consumption and food waste, students from French agricultural high schools were able to discover the challenges of healthy and sustainable food. They also attended documentary film screenings as part of the Alimenterre festival to raise awareness of sustainable and solidarity-based food systems.
The EADRSI network also proposes to mobilize for the young people of Madagascar and for the poor people close to home. The students participated in volunteer activities with local associations and organized a rice bowl action to raise funds for Malagasy agricultural colleges.
This year, the students collected nearly 4,920€, supplemented by 1,250€ from the CNEAP agricultural high schools themselves. This sum was donated to Fert to support the 5 agricultural colleges of Fekama in Madagascar. An extremely useful sum, because it represents 1 year of training for 12 students (the cost of training a young person is on average 500 €/year).
In spite of a year characterized by confinement and distance learning, the initiative on food solidarity here and there has been a real success.
“It’s an educational project that puts young people from here and there at the heart of it; a real active and concrete solidarity that materializes through the gift of oneself, however small, through “rice bowl” operations that are well explained to the young people and the mobilization of funding that is extremely useful for the agricultural colleges in Madagascar.”
Anne Panel, Director of Fert
The team of the EADRSI Occitanie network has made a video (in french) to come back on this day of solidarity.
