For the fourth consecutive year, ILEIA is supporting a student-driven initiative in the Netherlands to connect agricultural students and farmers.
The Farm Experience Internship is an initiative of a group of international students at Wageningen University inspired on a successful experience in Brazil. In it, students get to spend a couple of weeks at sustainable farm, living and working. In this way, the students increase their understanding of the realities and challenges of farmers and their families. Farmers not only benefit from the extra help at the farm, but from the new insights students bring back to their classrooms, their research projects and later into their professions.
During FEI, participants go through a three stage learning process: preparation, practical experience, and evaluation and collective assessment. This year, ILEIA assisted the preparatory stage by conducting an introductory workshop to agroecology as a science, movement and practice. It is very heartening that students from other disciplines joined FEI 2016 as well: among the participants there was a young woman with a Fine Arts background. This year also, there were representatives from nearly every continent and the first FEI in Ghana is under preparation thanks to the efforts of a Ghanaian student at Wageningen University.