Mr. Robert Spencer, a small ruminant specialist from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, recently returned from his second visit to Burma (also known as Myanmar) as volunteer for the USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer program. During Mr. Spencer’s first visit, he worked with the Myanmar Livestock Federation to help Burmese farmers enhance their knowledge in two areas: nucleus goat farming and meat quality analysis. On his latest assignment, he teamed up with the Myanmar Livestock Federation for a second time to present additional farmer trainings. This time, he was asked to cover three topics: small ruminant farming operations, livestock business management and goat milk soap making. Because of this, he referred to himself as “a man with three hats.” (more…)

Volunteer Reddy Bommineni completed a Farmer-to-Farmer assignment in Bangladesh, providing in-service training to staff from the Central Disease Investigation Laboratory under the Department of Livestock Services. Reddy shares his thoughts from his assignment in the blog post below:

It was a tremendous opportunity to be immersed in the country of Bangladesh. As a poultry veterinarian and microbiologist, it was my priority to work with the poultry industry and federal lab in Dhaka. The main objective was to improve capacity building of the existing systems in place. I was able to help speak to the needs and interests of personnel, educating on diagnostic techniques in necropsy, histopathology, bacteriology, parasitology, as well as molecular diagnostics. (more…)

Today’s blog post comes from Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer David Ending, who worked with the Agriculture and Forestry University (AFU) in Nepal to help develop an evaluation action plan.

After his first week in country, David explained:

Coming to Nepal is a tremendous opportunity to learn with university staff. Having worked on and off in Africa for 45 years it is easy to apply lessons learned from many places. A big advantage in Nepal is the network that Winrock staff has developed. Two of the three professional staff of Winrock Nepal went to AFU. They went to school with many of the staff and have an excellent professional relationship. They were able to set up meetings with all key people before starting the main assignment. Having the support of all staff levels makes the assignment that much easier. (more…)