From Followers to Changemakers: Young Voices for Better Food

MIJARC Europe | Reboot the Food System | August 2026

Scroll through social media for a few minutes and you will see food everywhere: recipes, restaurant reviews, diet tips, 'what I eat in a day' videos. Food is one of the most shared topics online. But very few of these posts talk about who grew the food, under which conditions, or what it meant for the land. That gap is where young people can make a difference.

Why young voices matter

Young people listen to other young people. Many of us get most of our news from social media and from friends rather than from institutions. A short video from someone you know, explaining why a tomato in January has travelled so far, can reach more people than a long official report ever will.

Rural young people also have stories that are rarely heard in cities: what it means to take over a family farm, why the village shop closed, how one dry summer changed the whole harvest. These are real stories, and they make the food system feel close and human.

Learning to tell the story

This is the idea behind the School of Influencers, one of the main activities of Rebooting the Food System. Participants work on two things at the same time. The content: how the food system works and where it fails. And the tools: how to find reliable information, shape a message, film and edit with just a phone, and deal with negative comments. This year we organised sessions in Malta, Prague and Bremen with young people from our member organisations across Europe.

Something we notice every time: the strongest content rarely comes from the most polished speakers. It comes from people talking about something they know. Some of the best pieces this year were very simple, like a conversation with a grandparent about how food was bought and cooked when they were young, or a walk across a family field explaining what grows there and why.

If you want to start

• Start from your own experience. You do not need to explain the whole food system in one post

• Check your facts and say where your information comes from

• Keep it short and honest, people notice when something sounds fake

• Give people one small thing they can do

• Do not avoid difficult topics, but stay respectful in the discussion

Being a multiplier is not about having thousands of followers. It is about bringing one more person into the conversation. If every young person who cares about food talks to five friends about it, the debate on the future of farming starts to look very different.

Want to get involved? Get in touch with your national MIJARC member organisation or follow us on Instagram at @mijarceurope.

This article was produced within the project Rebooting the Food System, co-financed by the European Union through its Development Education and Awareness Raising (DEAR) programme.

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Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.