Knight wins big with Food4Change

KINGSTON – Sixteen-year-old Barbadian Kya Knight has emerged as one of five winners in the recently concluded Food4Change Caribbean story writing competition held under the University of the West Indies Improving Household Nutrition Security and Public Health in CARICOM Project or Food and Nutrition (FaN) Project, based at the Caribbean Institute for Health Research (CAIHR).

Talented Knight, who attends the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies, won a laptop computer for her entry that highlighted the need for youngsters to embrace healthy lifestyles.

Her story focused on how embracing a healthy life positively affected  a young girl who had a lot of trouble deciding what she wanted to do with her life. Her story also drew attention to the emotional turmoil youngsters experience when making decisions.

There were 85 entries to the Food4Change Caribbean Story Writing Competition and five winners overall: three from Jamaica, one from St. Kitts and one from Barbados.

The competition was mounted to support the development of learning resources to enhance the teaching and learning of the revised Health and Family Life Education (HFLE) curriculum in the CARICOM Region.

Speaking at the recent awards ceremony in Bridgetown, Barbados, Knight said that she enjoyed participating in the story writing competition “even though it was challenging at first I really enjoyed the script writing and the interactive sessions, where I was able to hash out ideas with my peers.”

Principal investigator with the FaN Project Professor Alafia Samuels said that the winning stories will anchor an exciting activity under the FaN project.

“We are going to be using the winning stories, and working with the Jamaican award winning Ashe Theatre Company. We will create audio versions of stories that will explain the challenges that young people face in society around living healthy, loving themselves, eating right and exercising,” Samuels said.

The four-year FaN project, ending in June 2022, focuses on investigating and influencing national food systems to help combat obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in CARICOM.

This story writing competition will result in merged stories by Ashe Theatre Collective to create a radio drama to enhance HFLE delivery across CARICOM classrooms. At the end of the project, the findings will be packaged for use by other CARICOM member states so that successful, effective activities can be adapted and implemented.  (PR)