2024 Festival Recap
Our Festival
The Food 4 Thought 2024 Festival was a first-of-its-kind food festival bringing together students from global universities to envision the future of the food system. F4T took place on the historic campus of Harvard University and was run entirely by students. Over the course of three days, F4T featured speakers, thought leaders, researchers, food vendors, and alternative protein companies from across Boston and around the world. Through impactful panels, workshops, and fairs, the festival aimed to give students and other attendees the tools and knowledge to help shape the future of food to be more sustainable, equitable, healthy, and cruelty-free.
Initiatives
Research Incubator
With our Research Incubator, we aim to highlight the groundbreaking, food-related research being conducted by attending students and encourage curious individuals to partake in their own research endeavors. The Research Incubator will be divided into two sections: a Poster Showcase and a Research Competition. Select posters will be awarded either Seed or Research Grants.
Idea Lab
The Idea Lab is a competition designed to spark ideas that address specific challenges within our current food systems through direct, actionable, and measurable projects. Select ideas will receive a Seed Grant and access to a multitude of benefits—team recruitment, capacity building, management, finances, and guidance on project execution.
Career Networking
Our Career Networking program connects students with organizations working in the future food movement that cover a diverse range of interests. The overarching Career Development will be divided into four parts: the Career Fair, Career Advising, Career Matching, and Mentorship Program.
Coalition Building
Our Coalition Building Workshop allow students from different corners of the world to connect over shared interests and ideas. We provide a space for brainstorming and strategizing about collaborative projects and envisioning the future of food around our common goals. We also provide a training and certification program to help students to improve their organizing and leadership skills.
Food Festival
Our World Cultural Food Festival and Exhibition spotlights various plant-forward restaurants and food product vendors. Through our student exhibition, we highlight foods and recipes submitted directly by students and the personal stories associated with them.
Interactive Learning
Our Interactive Learning programs provide students with an enriching education through speaker panels, hands-on workshops, and engaging activities. We are harnessing the power of an experiential learning model by translating the lessons from speaker panels into direct action. Through various interactive modules, we encourage students to develop new skills while honing their interests within the food system and holistic wellbeing.
Student Collaborators
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Institutional Sponsors
External Sponsors
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External Collaborators
Donors
We would like to sincerely thank Davide Dukcevich for championing alt proteins and believing in the power of students.
We would like to extend our utmost gratitude to the Culley Carlson Foundation for supporting our mission and providing the invaluable opportunity for students to attend our event.
The Virsa Foundation's travel scholarship is to honor the memory of the founder’s maternal grandfather who was born in Undivided Punjab in the early 1920s, when the region was still part of British India. He borrowed his first ever pair of shoes when invited for an interview for admission to medical school, a cherished dream, but unfortunately could never make it because he ran out of money for transport to the city from his village. He walked several miles daily to receive higher education, and eventually rose to become part of the state’s leading experts and served on the team leading independent India’s largest hydropower project in northwestern India. He remained a champion of access to education for all throughout his life.