On 15 September 2026, more than 50 students and educators from across APAC and beyond came together for the first CultivatED Masterclass of the 2026/27 academic year, Building Partnerships for Change: The Art of Stakeholder Management.
We were delighted to welcome participants from more than three schools across the region, including ASJ Tianhe, Malvern College Hong Kong and Beijing International Bilingual Academy (BIBS), alongside individual student leaders from across the region, including Abbie Lee from Chinese International School (CIS) in Hong Kong, who will continue her CultivatED journey at the Global School Assembly in Rome next month, and Aanyaa Garatikar from NES International School Mumbai in India, as well as students and educators joining us from schools in Italy.
Led by Mads Lofvall from Next Impact’s Expert Council for Agrifood Systems & Sustainability, the Masterclass drew on his more than three decades of leadership experience across UN WFP, FAO and international development, including extensive field experience in Sri Lanka, Uganda and Lesotho, and invited students to explore a deceptively simple question:
How do you bring together farmers, businesses, governments, banks and international organisations when they all have different priorities?
Drawing on his field experience and his work leading the Farm to Market Alliance (FtMA), Mads took students beyond the theory of partnerships and into the realities of working with stakeholders across sectors, institutions and communities.
Through real-world cases and stakeholder mapping, students explored how to identify who matters, understand different interests, build trust and create shared value. The session also introduced the “Do No Harm” principle, encouraging students to consider not only how to create positive impact, but also how to ensure that their actions do not create unintended consequences for the communities and stakeholders they seek to support.
More importantly, the conversation brought these ideas back to the students themselves.
Global challenges can often feel distant from everyday school life. By understanding the people, institutions and communities surrounding an issue, students can begin to see how complex global challenges can be translated into accessible and meaningful learning – and eventually action – within their own schools and local communities.
We were also pleased to welcome Davide Agretto and Kisha German, Youth Education Specialists at FAO’s Office of Youth and Women (OYW). Davide brought the wider youth education perspective into the conversation, while Kisha joined the session as part of the wider CultivatED journey. Audrey Yeung, Youth Fellow at Next Impact, also supported the delivery of the Masterclass, bringing a student perspective to help ensure that the content remained relevant to everyday school life and connected global challenges with students’ own experiences and actions.
What Students Took Away
Perhaps the most meaningful reflections came from the students themselves.
Following the Masterclass, participating schools began sharing their own reflections on the session. Students highlighted how the experience had changed the way they think about developing projects — moving beyond online research and their own assumptions to better understand the people, perspectives and real needs behind the challenges they want to address.
“In the past, when I worked on projects, I mostly searched for information online by myself and rarely took the initiative to ask people what they really thought.
But this course made me realise that a real project isn’t something you can simply imagine into existence.
For future projects, I won’t rely solely on information from the internet. I’ll conduct more interviews, talk to different people, and design based on real needs.”
— Xinyu Yang, Beijing
“After attending this class, I have a much better understanding of how the CultivatED programme works.
This is my first year of MYP, and also my first time working independently on a community project. The two experts gave us many helpful suggestions, and I’m really looking forward to doing something meaningful together with my friends.”
— Aiyu Ou, Guangzhou
Another three students reflected on how the session gave her a clearer way to approach project development:
“This course helped me understand where to actually start when working on a project. Instead of feeling lost and moving forward blindly like I did before, I now have a much clearer sense of direction. It will be incredibly helpful for my future learning and practice.”
— Yichen He, Beijing
“I learnt quite a lot from the session from the day before yesterday, especially about how to better consider who your stakeholders are and the unforeseen ways your actions might affect them. My favourite part was learning about how to think of stakeholders who might be negatively impacted by your project and how to alleviate these impacts as that is something I rarely think about while working on my social impact projects. This was really insightful for me because as you know I am working on multiple projects of my own with various diverse stakeholders so applying what I learnt from the Masterclass could prove useful for growing my projects and making a more widespread impact. “
— Aanyaa Garatikar, Mumbai
“I was really happy that the expert took the time to answer my question so thoughtfully.
Through this session, I learned that different groups have different needs and perspectives, and that it is important to consider multiple stakeholders in order to find more practical solutions. It also made me realise that my teammates and I can apply this way of thinking to our project and better support our community. “
— Zirui Lin, Guangzhou
These reflections capture an important part of the CultivatED journey: not simply learning about global challenges, but developing the curiosity and practical tools to listen, understand and act within real communities.
Beyond the Masterclass itself, it was particularly exciting to see students from different schools and communities learning together. Building this kind of cross-school community is an important part of the CultivatED APAC pilot: connecting global expertise with local learning, while creating opportunities for young people to exchange perspectives and develop their own responses to challenges in agrifood systems.
A big thank you to Mads, Davide, Kisha, Audrey and the World Food Forum Youth Education team, as well as our wonderful educators, including Spring, Miguel, Nandita, Joe and Bryan, whose support helped make the session possible, and all the students who joined us.
This is only the beginning of the 2026/27 CultivatED journey.
As students move from Discover towards the next stages of CultivatED, we look forward to seeing how they take the ideas, tools and connections from these conversations and apply them within their own schools and communities – before coming together again to share, learn and build on one another’s experiences.
From understanding global challenges to creating change where we are.
