Explore Fellowship, Diving into Rain fed Agriculture, and traveling 🌅✈️
Veronika Kolarska I Summer'23 Newsletter
Hey there! My name is Veronika and welcome to my monthly newsletter! I’m a 16 y/o emerging technology enthusiast working towards creating an impact 🚀!
This summer has been filled with new experiences and growth coming from traveling, public speaking, researching, and new friendships.
Working on Mastercard’s Youth Employment Challenge
For the past couple of months, I have been tackling the Youth Employment Challenge organized by Mastercard. With a team, we worked on finding a solution to create 30M jobs across Africa by 2030. Our first step was zoning into a sector and country so we focused on improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Uganda. Our reasoning was that majority of Ugandans are employed in agriculture, the youth population is one of the highest in the world, and there’s immense potential in Uganda’s groundwater sources that can improve the food security of 200 million people with the right technologies 🌱.
However, we learned that Uganda needs to build resilience against climate change. The rural areas, which produce most of Uganda’s agriculture, are unable to adapt to rising temperatures hindering growth of the sector. The country is estimated to be losing 4 -12% of GDP annually due to the reliance on rain fed agriculture. Harvests are significantly below average following a 50-70% crop loss worsening food insecurity and malnutrition. The erratic rainfall patterns and low technological developments are factors affecting productivity and food security of farmers.
I became passionate about finding a solution to these problems and found an opportunity in Uganda's groundwater sources. As a result, my team and I built a recommendation to combat the effects of rain fed agriculture using irrigation. Our solution encompassed installing solar powered boreholes, a climate resilient, cost effective technology so that farmers could rely on groundwater rather than rain to grow their crops. I also looked at ways to train farmers to adapt to the borehole system through a partnership with Enable Youth. Click on the image to view the deck ⬇️.
Presenting Rain Fed Agriculture in Uganda: Problems & Solutions
After submitting the recommendation, I heard back from Mastercard executives and was able to share my findings with them! Ashley Collier and Emily Griffin are both head of partnerships at Mastercard. They gave me feedback and asked questions which pushed me to think further on the project. Big shoutout to them, and also to Ian Lockheart who made this possible.
During the summer, I decided to further my understanding of Uganda’s agriculture system and what climate smart technologies could be used to tackle it. I share my updated findings at the annual TKS Showcase, and at the Explore Fellowship in NYC.
The Knowledge Society (TKS) is a human accelerator program that provides innovators, and founders with the needed knowledge to succeed in the space. I have been a part of this program for 2 years and became an alumni at the end of June.
The Explore Fellowship is a 6 day program in Connecticut USA bringing together 60 people from around the world to learn about how to do the most good. I will talk more about it in the next section 👀
Explore Fellowship
For the first time I went traveling by myself to attend the Explore Fellowship down in NYC. It was a great experience. I learned about effective altruism, what it means to make an impact, and which problems are the most pressing to solve. I heard from industry leaders working in animal welfare, biosecurity, nuclear weapons, digital sentience, and philosophy. The fellowship was filled with interesting knowledge but more importantly, people from all around the world came to attend 😎. It’s so rare to be able to meet a diverse group from Norway, Canada, Miami, the US, and the UK in one fell swoop. I did my best to take advantage of the opportunity, making new friends and learning about different cultures. There are 5 key lessons I took away from Explore:
Dive into vulnerability.
Take the time to be 100% present daily.
Build in public.
Just travel.
Increase spontaneity and decrease expectations.
Click on the button below to view my reflection on Medium ✍️!
Hiking in Bulgaria
In the month of July, I got to visit my family in Bulgaria. We live in a small town, secluded from the main cities called Sapareva Banya. It’s located in the Rila mountain, where the smell of pine trees and the mountain breeze combine to form a rejuvenating space. With my mom, we decided to climb to peak Otovitsa, almost 2,700m above sea level and descend to the Rila Monastery. It was a very difficult climb. Everything was unexpected. We did not know where we were going to sleep, or if we were going the right way. We just figured it out as we went.
Receiving my Yellow Belt
After 3 years of recovering from a serious back injury, I decided to start taking care of my body again. I knew I needed a sport that would teach me a way of life and how to balance, so I chose karate. I am currently working towards obtaining my orange belt 💪
Closing Remarks
That’s it for this month’s update! Thank you for reading. If you have any suggestions, questions, or just want to talk, you can message me on LinkedIn. I hope you learnt something new and make sure to subscribe!