On 29-30 November 2023, rural youth entrepreneurs and FAO experts from Armenia participated in the Regional Rural Youth Forum for Europe and Central Asia: Making Rural More Attractive, organized by the UN FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia. Taking place in Budapest (Hungary), the two-day forum united young leaders and entrepreneurs to discuss the situation, challenges, and pathways of rural youth in the European and Central Asia Region, as well as provide a platform for exchange among youth actors, policy makers and representatives of international partners in the Region. 

Armenian young actors participated in presentation sessions and panel discussions and shared their experience and insights regarding generational turnover in agriculture, shedding light on challenges, opportunities, and successful strategies, as well as the role of young entrepreneurs and innovators in transforming and rebranding agriculture and providing diversification in the agricultural sector and beyond in rural areas. 

To deepen the knowledge on how to practically include youth in FAO’s work programmes and project cycle and strengthen young people’s inclusion in agrifood systems, the FAO focal point also participated in the workshop on Youth inclusion in FAO’s work programme and project cycle. 

At global level, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), underscores the need to include young women and men as “critical agents of change”, while leaving no-one behind. The Agenda also aims to provide “children and youth with a fostering environment for the full realization of their rights and capabilities” in the expectation that youth “will find in the Goals a platform to channel their infinite capacities for activism into the creation of a better world”. It also further highlights youth employment as a particular challenge for sustainable development and refers to young people as being at particular risk of marginalization. The integration of youth into sustainable development processes is therefore a crucial step in the process towards achieving the global Goals set in the 2030 Agenda, and in laying the foundations for more egalitarian societies. 

Video brief of rural reporter Ester Zakaryan on the event is available HERE.