More honours for Kinsale's Sophie

KINSALE student Sophie Healy Thow has added another win to her long list of achievements having taken honours at the Youth Ag Summit in Brussels. 

She was on the winning team at the  prestigious event which was awarded €10,000 by Bayer Crop Sciences to develop an online platform to empower women in agriculture.

Sophie, who is a Quercus scholar at UCC, where she is studying International Development & Food Policy, represented Ireland at the week-long bi-annual conference whose goal is to generate solutions for sustainable agriculture worldwide.

‘Our idea “AgriKua” is an online platform that will empower young women in agriculture through global and local networks of partnerships, educations, finance and technology,’ Sophie told The Southern Star.

‘Our initial focus is on Kenya where we will be teaching women in agriculture about developing sustainable agricultural practices in local communities, thereby increasing food security.’

A past winner of the BT Young Scientist and Google Science Fair, she was also named one of Time magazine’s ‘Top 20 most influential teens’ in 2014.

 Sophie is also a Food Security advocate and her winning team, which is made up of delegates from all over the world, will also be mentored and trained by Bayer to further help them progressing AgriKua.

‘I’m delighted to have this opportunity to work with a team of like-minded people from across the globe to create something truly special that will benefit so many and that combines my passion for combatting food poverty and gender equality. I’m looking forward to taking this idea to the next level.’

Sophie, who has been working on promoting food security through various initiatives around the world over the last few years, was also an invited delegate at the inaugural UNLEASH event earlier this year in Denmark, where talents from all over the world met to create real, scalable solutions to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Follow Agrikua on Facebook & Twitter @agrikua