Three Jamaican teens awarded at Food4Change Caribbean Regional Story Writing Competition

Three teenage Jamaican girls walked away with top awards at the recently concluded Food4Change Caribbean Story Writing Competition held under the University of the West Indies Food and Nutrition (FaN) Project, based at the Caribbean Institute for Health Research (CAIHR).

Mikaelia Nesbeth and Neville-Anné Morgan, who both attend Glenmuir High School in Clarendon, and Haley Clarke from Westwood High School for Girls in Trelawny won laptop computers for the stories they submitted, which illustrated learning objectives for the Health and Family Life Education revised curriculum.

“This competition was all about using children's voices to talk to other children about healthy eating, good living, and self-esteem, and these young ladies excelled,” explained Professor Alafia Samuels, principal investigator with the FaN Project as she congratulated the girls.

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.

“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,” added Professor Samuels at the ceremony.

The girls all said they found the experience rewarding but also challenging. Nesbeth explained why she wrote the winning story titled Khyla’s Body. “I picked that topic because I don’t feel that the relationship between body image, eating and mental health among teens is spoken about enough in Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean.”

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. The project seeks to identify and intervene at key leverage points in the regional food system to improve healthy eating and promote sustainable livelihoods of vulnerable groups in Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and St Kitts and Nevis. 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.