2025 Network Activities: when did we meet?

2025 was a rich year for online exchanges. The AFS network notably hosted its Thought for Food webinars, featuring presentations and discussions on innovation pitches, investment risks, digital solutions, climate resilience, youth-led initiatives, and innovative finance.

In addition, we explored two thematic lenses through dedicated webinar series on biodiversity and resilience thinking:

• Biodiversity: This series opened with a session presenting practical tools and recommendations for mainstreaming biodiversity and ecosystems in our work. The second session focused on financing mechanisms, with expert presentations on carbon markets, nature-based solutions, and payments for ecosystem services.Organising or participating to a webinar of the AFS Network
• Resilience thinking: This Learning Lab began by unpacking resilience as a concept and its application in practice. It then explored two complementary approaches to strengthening programme design and decision-making: capacity-based and scenario-based approaches, before moving onto the tricky question of monitoring and assessing resilience.

One hybrid event also allowed some of us to meet in person on 30 April to Harvest the future. This event provided an opportunity to:

• Celebrate the legacy of SFRAS for the last 20 years
• Present the Food system learning guide, a training developed to equip you in a few hours with some key learnings from the Food systems learning journey
• Launch the Knowledge Hub (K-Hub), including a new SDC user-friendly digital handbook on food systems
• Discuss the new programmatic framework of the newly merged Health & Food section
• Introduce the Cluster Green and its upcoming series on the Green Nexus

Last but not least, we witnessed an impressive flow of information sharing between you, the members of the AFS network, with 63 contributions sent to everyone via the newsletters, and 107 posts on the Closed User Groups (CUG), transmitted to every member of the AFS network.