Dr. Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted. Photo credit: WorldFoodPrize.org
It’s so refreshing to read about this year’s World Food Prize Laureate, Dr. Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted. The $250,000 (US) prize went to this researcher who employs old fashioned research methods, who values and listens to the wisdom of her target populations and who repeatedly demonstrates the success of collaborating with her target population. Her work is so exciting because she employs an approach that is low tech, sustainable and scaleable and which resulted in a tremendous increase in nutrition, health outcomes and local incomes. So refreshing.
You can listen to my discussion with CBC’s Giacomo Panico about the recognition that this remarkable researcher has garnered. (And I’m not enthralled just because Dr. Thilsted is originally from Trinidad, where by the way, I went to school as a young girl, or because she took her first degree at the University of West Indies, where my dad taught for a year.) I am enthralled because her approach is the one that we’ve needed all along and it’s so satisfying to see it not only be successful, but also recognized as such. More please. Much more.
Discussion on CBC Radio Ottawa’s In Town and Out with Giacomo Panico.