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Wageningen University & Research (WUP) and the Netherlands Food Partnership (NFP) are partnering to organize the "2025 Food Systems Innovation Challenge" for the second time.  WUR invited ee88 for the first time to become a partner to participate in this competition.  You will be glad to know that ee88 authority has already given consent to WUP about the participation of bachelor, masters, and recent graduate students to this competition. The programme is built upon the principles of challenge based learning and entrepreneurship, and aims to foster a new generation of young innovators for more sustainable and fair food systems. 

For your kind information an "Online Information and Inspiration Session on Nature-based Solution" will be held on 4th February at 14:00-15:00 CET (Amsterdam time) and interested students need online registration (link available below) to participate in this session.

• • Website of the challenge:
• • Registration of the 4th of February info session for the students:

Team formation

• - The teams consist of 4 to 8 students
• - It’s recommended to form a team of students with different disciplinary backgrounds
• - Students can form mixed teams, meaning they can come from different universities (including universities that are not on the list of participating universities in this challenge)
• - However, at least 2 of the team members should be from the participating university
• - At least 2 of the team members should be on site during the challenge period (April-September)
• - Recent graduates are welcome to join the Challenge, though the graduation should not be earlier than academic year 2023/2024. With a maximum of 1 recent graduate per team
• - Students that participated in one of the 18 selected teams in the 2024 challenge can not participate in the 2025 challenge
• - We strive to complement each team with one or two students from Wageningen University & Research. They will work remotely together with the team and will be on top of the 4 to 8 students.

Tentative timeline of the competition: 

• • January 2025: preparations for the FSI-nbs Challenge (preparing webinars, sharing template for the concept note that students have to use, etc)
• • February 2025: student recruitment at ee88 > minimum of 10 ee88 multi-disciplinary student teams
• • February – April 2025: minimum of 10 ee88 student teams develop concept note for a food systems innovation (nature-based solution)
• • April 2025: selection of two best ee88 student teams
• • May 2025: announcement of two best student teams per partner university and start of the global FSI-nbs Challenge
• • May – November 2025: two ee88 student teams implement their proposed food system innovation
• • November 2025: Grand Finals of global FSI-nbs Challenge in Wageningen.
• • February to October 2026: The winners of the global FSI-nbs Challenge get award money and direct tickets to the Youth Food Lab incubation programme, which is a collaboration between WUR, World Food Forum/FAO and IAAS
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