Winrock’s October Volunteer of the Month is Dr. Archie Devore, a dairy expert who completed a USAID Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) assignment in Nepal earlier this year. Archie is one of those individuals that doesn’t just work on his assignment and then go back to “business as usual” at home. Case in point: he raised $1200 to support a young man in Nepal after the massive earthquake in April.

“I started getting email and Facebook messages from my contacts in Nepal within six hours of the tragic earthquake that occurred on April 25. Some were from the staff at Winrock, but most were from my host and the young men that I worked with while on assignment. I was particularly touched by messages from Uddab Dahal, the young man who served me meals while I was staying at the Himalayan Horizons Hotel during the assignment,” Archie explains.

“He wrote me that he lost his house and his parents also lost their house in the earthquake. He sent me photos of the rubble that had been his home and mentioned that they had no way of rebuilding. I wrote him back and asked if I could send him some money to help build some kind of protection from weather. I sent money and was touched that Western Union had waived all fees to wire money to Nepal due to the earthquake. I had been getting many messages from my Facebook and local friends about what I knew about the situation there. I decided to post a message on Facebook, where I showed a photo of Uddab and me at the Hotel, and a photo showing the rubble of a house that had been his home. Within minutes, I had messages from my Facebook friends asking if they could send money to me for Uddab. In total, $1200 were raised over the weekend, and I sent all the money to Uddab. He was so appreciative and responded with a message, ‘You are very far, but you are in our hearts.’”

The generosity of Archie and his friends didn’t stop there.

Archie reveals, “My wife participates in a quilting group at our church, where they make quilts for missions and other sewing projects. They had just completed a crib-sized quilt while I was in Nepal. I asked if they would like to send it to Nepal. We sent the quilt to Uddab via parcel post, and it arrived there within two weeks after the earthquake. Uddab had a daughter just four months of age. He sent a photo of his daughter wrapped in the quilt, and this has touched many hearts in our church community.”

Beyond helping Uddab and his family, Archie has also maintains frequent communication with his host organization and the youth farmers who participated in his training.

We asked Archie to share his first impressions of Nepal and the most inspiring/memorable moment of his assignment. His responses have left us inspired!

“This was my first trip to Nepal. The warm welcome I received upon arriving in Nepal made a great impression on me. The people were very welcoming and expressed a special welcome to me with their eagerness to learn and to share with me while I was there,” he explains.

“This assignment was a good opportunity for me to share my experiences from working nearly 50 years in the dairy industry and to continue to bring new ideas to others around the world about how technology can make our lives more productive and rewarding.  I am always impressed with the creativity shown by workers in developing countries in solving problems and how receptive they are to learning new ideas from others. The respect they show and the willingness to implement and try new things is extremely rewarding and satisfying. I learn from every new assignment and find great satisfaction from helping others become more efficient in their efforts and labors.

The most pleasing part of the assignment was that I could present new ideas and practices to the students in a lecture or classroom setting and then we could go to the barns to apply the ideas and practices. Then the next day we could discuss how the practice worked for them, if they had any questions, encountered any problems, and if they would continue to apply the new ideas or practices. On the first day I noticed the students were not applying normal hand milking techniques. I explained why it is important to have clean, dry hands while milking to prevent contamination and spread organisms from one cow to another. The following day they reported their hands were sore, but they would continue to practice the new technique. They became quite proficient with it before the end of the assignment.”

Archie goes on his next F2F assignment in February, this time to Bangladesh. We look forward to seeing what he will accomplish there!

This year, the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Program celebrates 30 years of implementation around the world. We asked staff to reflect on the spirit of F2F and what makes the program so special. Their responses weave together themes of service, dedication, selflessness, exchange. Winrock is grateful to be a part of this rewarding program!

“The spirit of the F2F program is about selflessness. On their own time, our volunteers selflessly share information and provide technical assistance to groups or individuals that need the guidance in order to improve their businesses practices and strengthen their institutions. Our hosts are also selfless and gracious to accept our volunteers and share their knowledge and culture with them.”  –Gelsey Bennett, Program Officer

“Due to its unique approach of mobilizing US experts as volunteers, F2F is the best way of sharing and communicating issues and learning among countries to achieve the program’s main objective to generate rapid, sustainable, and broad-based food security and economic growth in the agricultural sector. This is also a two way leaning process(volunteer to host to volunteer).” –Vrigu Duwadi, F2F Nepal Country Director

“I would say that the spirit of the F2F program is best captured by this quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: 

Everyone can be great because anyone can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t even have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve… You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

Our volunteers are varied, from livestock farmers to PhD’s in Agricultural Education; what they all have in common is their desire to give back and serve others. Many of our volunteers go above and beyond their assignment tasks,  providing their hosts with assistance long after the assignment is over, this demonstrates their dedication and willingness to help others in any way that they can.” –Angela Krazsewski, Program Associate/Recruiter

“The spirit of the program is embodied in its people-to-people focus. I’ve been a F2F volunteer myself, and now, as a F2F staff, I love hearing stories from volunteers, field staff, and host organizations that confirm that the experience is as eye-opening and impactful as I remember it to be myself. The American volunteer experts come to the host country hoping to teach, to share something that will make a difference. Many (if not most) are successful in doing so. But without a doubt, all of them leave their assignments having gained something themselves. I wish more Americans could experience this.” –Jen Snow, Program Officer/F2F M&E and Outreach Director

In the last 12 months alone, 126 F2F volunteers assisted more than 8,200 farmers, agriculture educators, agribusiness owners, technicians, and others, in seven countries.

More information and current volunteer opportunities are posted at:www.winrock.org/volunteer

Today’s blog post comes from volunteer Ed Levi, after completing his Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) assignment in Bangladesh:

“I’ve done numerous F2F assignments around the world but this is my first contribution to the blog. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever contributed to any blog. But not only was I asked to blog about my assignment but I’m also aware of the value and the fact that this last assignment was something special. I thought I’d share.

Having done three previous assignments in Bangladesh, I was already familiar with many of the staff and some of the issues which needed addressing in my sector of honey production and all that involves. But this latest assignment was clearly different. That’s not to say that not all assignments have their particulars that create interesting challenges and, when successful, however large or small, have their rewards.

The host for this assignment was actually another branch of Winrock International and the USAID for Climate-Resilient Ecosystems and Livelihoods (CREL) Program for Bangladesh. After my briefing with Winrock’s F2F staff in Dhaka I was handed over to the Dhaka CREL staff for more briefing. In fact, I’d been in touch with both staffs some weeks prior to my arrival and was already excited about this assignment. Beyond CREL being involved in the issues its name infers, they were ready and prepared to make some real differences in the honey sector of Bangladesh.

This assignment involved the bees and the products they produce in the Sundarbans. The Sundarbans is a National Forest in the southwest of the county and is really the mouth of the delta of the major rivers that make up Bangladesh. It is the largest mangrove forest in the world and the home to the largest population of Bengal tigers. Although it is called a forest, it is in fact, a huge jungle with no roads and no human inhabitants. It has a complex network of waterways that are used for access and transportation. It is also the seasonal home of the wild, giant specie of honeybees known as Apis dorsata.

Apis dorsata, like all honeybees live in a complex, family structure and require nectar and pollen for their food and offspring development. Unlike the bees we normally know, Apis dorsata refuses to live in cavities but rather hangs large single combs from branches and eaves. It also migrates with the flower’s seasons and is known to go as far as 200 km. The wild bees of the Sundarbans are known to go as far north as northern Bangladesh, then come south for the mustard and other crops into the middle of the country and then down into the Sundarbans for the wild flowers of the jungle. They start arriving in the Sundarbans in late September and into October. At each location, colonies need to build new nests and collect new honey.

For thousands of years the honey hunters (Mawalis) of the Sundarbans have collected that honey. They don’t keep bees but hunt them and collect their honey. For years they did this in ways that weren’t sustainable as they didn’t understand that taking the brood with the honey was reducing the wild bees’ populations. But some 15 years ago they learned more sustainable methods and now, for the most part, leave the brood and some amount of honey in place when the harvest their crops.

The goal of this assignment was to further the goals of sustainable practices and help the Mawalis through the development of a value-chain to produce a high quality product that will better support them and also create other related industries for the people who live in the adjacent towns around the Sundarbans. Clearly this assignment was not expected to reach the goal but to size up the potential and design a strategy for working toward that goal. This required some organization building, working with local authorities, defining some quality standards and ways they can be implemented, suggesting how the value-chain can be structured and suggest adjacent industries that can both feed into the Mawalis’ work and process the products in ways that respect the qualities of honey produced in the Sundarbans. It was also noted that the by-product of beeswax from the wild bees had special qualities that are worthy of value-added processes that can be done in cottage industry settings.

For me, it was all exciting; to be working with wild honeybees, with the traditions of thousands of years of honey hunters/collectors and helping to design a structure that would maintain the integrity of the jungle and its bees while creating some very special products. All along the way I worked with a very capable team of people and with people who were as excited as I am about the prospects. What can be better than a quality product that comes from the wild bees that collect the honey produced from the nectars of the flowers of a protected jungle?”

–Ed Levi

Dr. Onesimus Otieno recently returned from a Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer assignment in Senegal, providing training and syllabus development on weed control for the Horticultural Initiation Center of Saint Louis. He shares thoughts from his assignment below:

“I arrived in Dakar, Senegal to an early morning rain. The rainbow never looked better as it marked the start of what turned out to be a great visit. My in-country hosts were there to meet me with a warm welcome into a world like no other.  The country office hosts were an exceptionally caring team that made me feel at home in minutes. I was there to develop a syllabus and teach a course on weed management with special emphasis on nutsedge at the Horticultural Initiation Center (CIH) in St. Louis, Senegal. This assignment was my first with Winrock and to West Africa.

At the school, we found very eager principal, teachers, and students ready to learn new skills and apply them right away. Schools were closed around the country and it was commendable that they would spend two weeks back on campus to review their curriculum in preparation for the new school year. We collaboratively produced a digital catalogue of local weeds. Thanks to Suleyman Diallo, a research scientist with the National Agricultural Research Institute, ISRA, we made a digital catalogue of all the 25 weeds found in the center’s garden with both scientific and local names. One of the techniques learned was to use animals for weed suppression in the vegetable gardens. Everyone had a chance to design a chicken tractor and one of the trainers took the lead as he also had experience and a local business making hen houses from recycled tin cans.

Trainees identifying the life stages of nutsedge and determining its density in the gardens

Trainees learning to identify different weeds and control methods

The days were busy with classes in the morning, which started with hands-on exercises and followed with lectures. The later part of the day was spent reviewing material with Pape Tall, the Winrock program manager who translated it into French and helped in delivery. We also reviewed the hands-on activities and tools with the principal, Demba Diop. The days went fast and I cannot help but marvel at the amount of work we covered.

I ate a lot of rice and fish with enough variation in both the fish and rice each time. I tried the popular local bissap, ginger and baobab drinks, which were an exceptional delight with the fataya (deep-fried wheat dough snack) during breaks between learning sessions. I owe a ton of gratitude to the people of Senegal, who opened my world to a new culture, languages and a different outlook of challenges and opportunities in agricultural production and training in skills development. Thanks to Winrock for making it happen. I look forward to updates from the CIH, St. Louis and more stories of the transformational changes around the world brought by the farmer-to-farmer program.”

–Onesimus Otieno

Trainers, teachers, and recent graduates of the Horticultural Initiation Center of St. Louis, Senegal