Locations
The Social Good Summit is a globally celebrated event, a time set aside to raise awareness, inspire global actions and explore accelerating means of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. As Sierra Leone continues to join the global team to celebrate our 8th custom edition of this Summit, a series of activities have been identified to commemorate this year’s event that continues to focus on identifying young positive deviants living within communities and motivating them to play a more active role in identifying possible innovative means of fast-tracking the achievement of national development objectives and the SDGs by 2030. This celebration will be climaxed with the ‘National Youth Recognition Awards’ which will be given to outstanding young Sierra Leoneans across the country.
The Government of Sierra Leone through the Ministry of Youth Affairs in collaboration with National Youth Commission, National Youth Service, Directorate of Science Technology and Innovation, United Nations Agencies and Private Sector Partners is using this national platform to:
❖Give young people the opportunity to showcase their ideas, creativity and use of technology to solve community development challenges.
❖Recognise young people who with their meagre resources have invested in developing community support programmes/interventions that have created a positive change in the lives of people around them.
The Social Good Summit has always had a catalytic impact in Sierra Leone as winners of previous awards have contributed remarkably towards the development in Sierra Leone. The male prize winners for 2020, Samuel Mattia and Martin Dainbaquee, who presented solutions on hydroponics and rechargeable poultry hatchery respectively are currently undergoing testing in readiness for scale-up investment with the UNDP Accelerator Lab. While the female prize winners, Yembeh Kargbo and Susan Fatu Tarawally, including three SGS Youth Ambassadors, are currently part of the Youth Empowerment Employment Programme and are supported by UNDP to scale up their businesses.
This year’s event will be aligned with the Global International Youth Day theme ‘Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Planetary Health’. This theme couldn’t be better suited to the current situation we find ourselves in the world today with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Sierra Leone, we are facing challenges of low productivity, lack of improved agricultural practices, lack of use of technology, and the adverse effects of traditional agricultural practices on the environment have led to inefficient food systems and food insecurity affecting predominantly youth. This year’s local theme for the Social Good Summit 2021 will be ‘Lɛ wi fɛn idia pan Agrikɔlchɔ fɔ mɛk Salone Food ɛn ɛnvironmɛnt sikur’ (Let us Innovate in Agriculture for Food Security & Sustainable Environment in Sierra Leone).
There will be three categories of challenges this year:
1. Youth Innovation Competition in Agriculture focuses on innovative solutions on improving agricultural productivity and food systems, while considering the protection of the environment at large. The Awards will be gender-based, with a male and female winner and runner-up selected. The winning prize will be LE20,000,000, while the runner-up prizes (Male and Female categories)
2. Youth Assistive Technologies for People with Disabilities Innovation Competition focuses on solutions that help or enable people living with disabilities to fulfil their potential. There will be a Winner and Runner-up Award Prize given. The winning prize of LE20,000,000; Runner-up prize of LE10,000,000
3. Youth Impact Competition seeks to identify young people that are doing something in their community that has made a difference and a positive impact to the lives of people. This Award seeks to identify 5 successful young people from each region (North, North-West, South, East & West) that will be granted the title of ‘Youth Ambassadors” for 2021. The winning prize for each Ambassador will be LE10,000,000.
The submission of application forms is open for 1 month, between 16th September - 15th October 2021. Interested parties can apply online via the National Youth Forum website:
1. Aplication Guidelines & form for Agriculture Innovation Challenge
