The Food Systems Handbook (https://www.foodsystemshandbook.org/) is an EA-aligned, open-source, and independent project. It arose to collate, analyse, and categorise resources on the current global food crisis, providing an easy-to-use database to aid decision-makers across the policy, academic, humanitarian, and development sectors. We primarily collect case studies of best practice within food security interventions, focusing on the most pressing food security issues at any given time.
The Handbook’s network is global, and spans across dozens of NGOs (Mercycorp, Oxfam, Norwegian Refugee Council, Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters, etc.), governments (DEFRA, USAID, etc.), the private sector (Bayer, Calysta, etc.), and multilaterals (the African Union, UNFAO, WFP, etc.).
We are currently looking for volunteers to join our team, to assist us in finding and analysing resources, as well as to conduct meta-analyses and write reports on the resources that we find. This would be an excellent opportunity for a student looking to attain research experience (particularly in social sciences), and doesn’t require a background in food security (though an interest in international development would help).
We can offer flexible volunteering hours, and you will have the opportunity to meet and work with many interesting people from all around the world (see the list of organisations above!), while gaining valuable research skills.
Any interested parties can contact the Food Systems Handbook Team by emailing [email protected].
In terms of the skills we'd (preferably) like our technical volunteers to have:
- Experience working with/creating databases, using database software that requires coding (e.g. MongoDB or similar)
- Knowledge of how to create ranking algorithms for data sorting
