J. Frank White Academy (JFWA) senior Rachel Harville, of Tazewell, traveled through Italy in August with Education First (EF) Tours as one of 20 recipients of the company’s Global Citizen scholarships.

Selected from a pool of 600 applicants, Harville toured Rome, Sorrento and Florence ahead of the Future of Food Global Summit in Milan. Harville and hundreds of students from around the world explored how food trends are contributing to the growth of the worldwide culinary industry and what it means for the future of food. The tour explored the history of Italy’s food industry and investigated how Western food trends are combining with European culinary traditions.

The experience culminated with a two-day leadership conference with world renowned speakers including Raj Patel and Anthony Bourdain. The summit also involved students in expert-led workshops and design thinking, a creative problem-solving technique used by companies like Apple and Google. The international teams of students created prototypes to present solutions to food challenges that they had identified.

“Seeing the Colosseum, walking on the original Roman streets, looking up at the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, that was all amazing and breathtaking,” Harville said. “But, the most important thing to me is the friends that I made within the tour group. Everyone was so motivated and aware and had a craving for knowledge for the sake of learning. Which is something that is hard to come by.”

EF Tours selected Harville to receive journalism and public speaking internships during the tour. She spoke to over 1,800 students, teachers and media following Patel’s presentation. Her internship also allowed her to interview the keynote speakers, attend press conferences and interact with professional journalists. Now that she has returned to the United States, she will continue to promote her experience by publishing a blog on the EF.

Harville has previously studied global food trends, problems and solutions as a member of the United States delegation to the World School International Forum held in Japan in October of 2016. Harville and classmates Olivia Robertson and Alex Wright are currently writing a grant for funding to build an organic greenhouse for the JFWA.

She said Patel shared a profound thought that will stay with her as she continues her journey with food. “He said ‘Food won’t solve hunger.’ And he is right. Even with the seven billion people on the planet we have more than enough food to feed all the people on Earth. It is the distribution of the food that is the problem,” Harville said.

The J. Frank White Academy is a private coeducational college preparatory school located on the campus of Lincoln Memorial University and serves students grades 4-12 from Claiborne, Union, Campbell and Hancock counties in Tennessee; Bell County, Kentucky; and Lee County, Virginia. For more information contact the Academy Office at 869-6234 or visit http://www.lmunet.edu/academy.