Aiwan Abhay Minz, a nine-year-old boy from Ranchi, had got a letter from Rome that invited him to address the Global Ingenious Youth Forum 2021 on the opening day.

The meet, organised jointly by the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and the Indigenous Champions of the UN Food Systems Summit, will be held virtually from June 16 to 18 this year.

Believing that the ingenious youths may learn from the rich traditional knowledge and the skills of innovation and adaptability from their respective communities, the organisers want them to share their views at the forum so that those are reflected in the UN food system policies “to ensure the spirit of living no one behind”.

“Ingenious peoples’ food systems are considered some of the most sustainable in the world,” the organisers said in their letter to Aiwan, adding the youths are the future who can make important contributions towards sustainability.

The indigenous youths, with their understanding of cosmogonies, beliefs, culture, heritage, livelihood and territories that are so fundamental to their identities, hold the ability to combine innovations and modern technologies with traditional practices that may play a key role in the fight for food security and zero hunger, they further explained.

“I’ll speak on the traditional system of preservation of seeds and chemical-free farming that is done in our villages,” Aiwan, a Class IV student at St Xavier’s School in Ranchi, replied when asked what he would speak, adding the system was now being promoted as “inorganic farming”.

But how did he know about the system? “We are very attached to our roots and often visit our ancestral village in Gumla district where he gets to see all these,” said his father Abhay Sagar Minz who teaches anthropology at Dr SP Mukherjee University in Ranchi. He added his son is inquisitive, asks a lot of questions and also learns fast.

“I’ll begin my five-minute talk with a small part of our Sarna prayer,” Aiwan informed, explaining that would be a prayer to the ancestors to be present with him when he would narrate the system that the departed souls had innovated and practised.

Aneesh Shreshtra, a representative of a youth organisation of Nepal who had seen Aiwan earlier, had recommended his name that was accepted in Rome, his parents informed.

When asked if Aiwan would miss visiting Rome as it would be a virtual meet, he said: “Yes, but I had gone abroad before.” He added he had gone to the US, Switzerland, Philippines, Thailand and Nepal with his parents.

“We took him along when we had to attend conferences and it was on one such occasion Aneesh saw him and was impressed,” informed the boy’s mother, Meenakshi Munda, who is the president of the Asia Pacific Indigenous Youth Network, headquartered in Philippines.

“A Filipino friend had suggested we named him as Aiwan that means ‘fearless’ in one of the tribal languages of that country,” his mother explained, when asked how their son got such an unusual name.