Kinsale woman Sophie Healy-Thow is a youth activist whose work towards transforming food systems was recognised in New York this May when she was awarded a Global Citizen Prize.
These awards, given to just six of what the organisers called “trailblazing changemakers,” focus on activists — from Colombia, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Fiji, Uganda and Ireland — who are taking action to end extreme poverty and champion the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Now aged 26, food systems are an area that Healy-Thow has been passionate about since working on a research project with Kinsale Community School classmates Emer Hickey and Ciara Judge.
It had the ambitious aim of combating the global food crisis using natural bacteria to speed up the germination and growth of cereal crops.
They won the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition in 2013, going on to take first prize in biology at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists in Prague later that year before winning the Grand Prize at the 2014 Google Science Fair in San Francisco.
“Our project revolved around agriculture and increasing crop growth and the impact that might have for farmers, not just in sub-Saharan Africa, but even Irish farmers or farmers in the US,” says Healy-Thow, pointing out people are going hungry and relying on food banks in every country.
As a teenager, Healy-Thow understood food insecurity was a hidden problem that could have long-term consequences. “It led me to the realisation that people just weren’t aware of what food insecurity was and the impact it can have on an individual, a community or even a generation of young people.”
Healy-Thow credits her mother and grandmother with setting her on this food activist path.
She became interested in food as a child when she moved to Kinsale with her mother and sister. Initially, they lived with her grandmother, who had grown up on Heir Island in West Cork and whose food and sustainability ethos enormously impacted young Healy-Thow.
“Before that, I just ate the food that was put on the table in front of me. I didn’t think where it came from, But Gran had apple trees, she would teach us how to harvest seaweed from the coast, how to pick periwinkles. She taught us what it meant to appreciate Irish food. Those were transformative years [although] at the time, I didn’t realise I was being educated about food.”
Determined to raise awareness about food insecurity, she started posting about it on social media, which led her to be, as she says, “invited into a lot of rooms where I felt like the token young person, a box to be ticked off.”
She and nine other young people under 25 were invited to a United Nations Food Systems Summit in 2021 — but were not given seats at the table to participate.
“We were just standing at the wall, and so we left. It made me realise a lot of policies are made for future generations without the input of young people,” says Healy-Thow.
Unimpressed with the lack of engagement, these young people wrote their own proposal.
“We wanted to create something that has impact at its core and where we can educate a wider audience of the impact of food insecurity on us as individuals, on the impact it has on our political systems and future generations.”
With funding secured from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) — a non-profit foundation supported in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — they established Act4Food in 2021.
“In just three years, we’ve grown to be in 27 countries,” Healy-Thow says proudly. “We’ve had more than 60 individual youth leaders go through [training]. We have more than 400 volunteers worldwide, and some 160,000 [young people] have taken a pledge, saying that they support the movement and will do something in their own community to actively transform food systems.”
Healy-Thow is also the coordinator of GAIN’s global youth campaigns.
When we speak, she is on her lunch break from running Act4Food youth leader workshops involving young people aged between 18-25, gathering in the Netherlands to learn how they can make a difference in their communities.
“There are people from the UK, Slovakia, China, Hong Kong, Malawi, Kenya,” she says.
“A lot of young people have experienced food insecurity first-hand, whether they’re in the UK or in war-torn Ethiopia. But they don’t let that define them. They see that experience as a way to create the change they want to see to ensure that other young people don’t experience that going forward.”
While Act4Food thinks globally — it has 10 simple actions for change — a lot of the work happens at community level.
“There’s no hierarchy to creating change within food because food is the one thing that connects us all. It’s the one thing we have in common.”
Currently living in London and familiar with a world stage, speaking at events like the Nobel Peace Prize and COP28, Healy-Thow is also keenly aware of what’s happening in Ireland.
She is looking forward to speaking at the Irish food symposium Food on The Edge, which is taking place in Galway on October 21 and 22. “I like to stress the importance of Irish food because it’s something a lot of young people are getting disconnected from now,” she says.
“It’s about reaching people and helping them understand the importance of Irish food, supporting local growers and eating seasonably and sustainably.”
Food connects the world, and Healy-Thow knows that no matter how far she moves from her Kinsale home, it will bring her back.
