{"id":2,"date":"2018-03-13T11:26:55","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T11:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2019-02-16T12:44:39","modified_gmt":"2019-02-16T12:44:39","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About Me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"color: #808080\"><em>\u201cI am an African child<\/em><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #808080\"> <em> Born with a skin the colour of chocolate<\/em><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #808080\"> <em> Bright, brilliant and articulate<\/em><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #808080\"> <em> Strong and bold; I\u2019m gifted<\/em><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #808080\"> <em> Talented enough to be the best<\/em><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #808080\"> <em> I am an African child\u201d \u2013 Eku McGred<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-100 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/04\/21985886_1686132418064034_2079644203_o-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/04\/21985886_1686132418064034_2079644203_o-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/04\/21985886_1686132418064034_2079644203_o-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/04\/21985886_1686132418064034_2079644203_o.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 85vw, 225px\" \/><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Tokelo Shai is an MSc Student in Climate Change, Agriculture and Food security at the National University of Ireland Galway funded by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishaid.ie\/\">Irish Aid<\/a>. She made the choice to pursue her\u00a0 studies in this field due to her ex<span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">perience working as intern at <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 1rem\" href=\"http:\/\/southsouthnorth.org\/\">SouthSouthNorth<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">. The experience revealed the irrefutable truths of climate change and how it will impact the livelihoods of farmers across the world, but most importantly smallholder farmers such as her grandmother who is dear to her\u00a0 heart. She\u00a0 gained invaluable skills in climate change adaptation for smallholder farmers, the role of investments in climate resilient infrastructure and management of projects.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Her educational background is a BSc in Applied Statistics and Chemistry at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where she went on an exchange semester in the second year of the program to Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. During her time there, she did an intensive German and chemistry course.<\/p>\n<p>In this blog, she shares experiences, findings and lessons from her research project that will be\u00a0 supervised by NUI Galway MScCCAFS program, International Fund for Agricultural Development (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ifad.org\/\">IFAD<\/a>) and CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security program (<a href=\"https:\/\/ccafs.cgiar.org\/\">CCAFS<\/a>).<\/p>\n<h5><span style=\"color: #339966\">Background on Institutions:<\/span><\/h5>\n<p><strong>International Fund for Agricultural Development<\/strong> is an international financial institution which is specialized in the United Nations Agency. It provides investments in rural development that aim to empower people in rural areas to increase food security, improve nutrition of their families and increase their income.<\/p>\n<p><strong>CGIAR Reseach Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security<\/strong> which is led\u00a0 the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ciat.cgiar.org\/\">International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)<\/a>\u00a0addressing climate change challenges and declining food security on agricultural practices, policies and measures through strategic, broad-based global partnerships.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-248\" src=\"http:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/08\/download-300x92.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"92\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/08\/download-300x92.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/08\/download.jpg 405w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px\" \/>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-85\" src=\"http:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/04\/ifad-logo-300x154.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"209\" height=\"108\" \/>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-84\" src=\"http:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/04\/CCAFS_i320-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"180\" height=\"180\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/04\/CCAFS_i320-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/04\/CCAFS_i320-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/04\/CCAFS_i320-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2018\/04\/CCAFS_i320.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 180px) 85vw, 180px\" \/><\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI am an African child Born with a skin the colour of chocolate Bright, brilliant and articulate Strong and bold; I\u2019m gifted Talented enough to be the best I am an African child\u201d \u2013 Eku McGred Tokelo Shai is an MSc Student in Climate Change, Agriculture and Food security at the National University of Ireland &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/about\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;About Me&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":296,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions\/296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/tokelo-shai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}