Riva Brown is Winrock International’s 2024 Farmer-to-Farmer Volunteer of the Year
Riva Brown, a university professor and volunteer who conducted a highly successful assignment with a women-owned enterprise in Senegal, has been named Winrock International’s 2024 Farmer-to-Farmer Volunteer of the Year.
Brown is an associate professor of public relations at the University of Central Arkansas and a global learning specialist with UCA’s Center for Global Learning and Engagement, as well as academic coordinator at EDGE@Baridon, a living-learning community at UCA. She collaborated with Winrock’s program team to design and carry out a volunteer assignment to support the marketing efforts of Kawral Rewbe Gourel Hadji, a Senegalese women’s enterprise that produces organic moringa and hibiscus. Both plants have nutritional and health benefits and have become increasingly popular in the global supplements market. Brown’s selection as Volunteer of the Year was announced by KARK news, on KATV news, TheCabin.net and in a press release issued by UCA.
Aligned with Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative, the USAID-funded F2F program arranges volunteer experts to foster inclusive agriculture growth, facilitate private sector engagement, strengthen local capacity and promote climate-smart development. All volunteer F2F assignments focus on the priorities of in-country host organizations with the goal of supporting economic growth that increases incomes and improves access to nutritious food.
Winrock has conducted F2F assignments around the world for more than three decades. In that time, Winrock volunteers have completed more than 7,000 assignments in 59 countries, enabling U.S.-based volunteers to engage with farmers and agri-entrepreneurs to share their technical expertise. Winrock is one of nine implementing partners of F2F.
In July, Brown spent five days in Senegal training a group from Kawral Rewbe Gourel Hadji. The comprehensive workshop she conducted covered essential marketing topics including website creation, social media optimization and digital marketing.
“One of Riva’s most impressive achievements was her ability to impart digital marketing knowledge to illiterate women in a remote, rural area,” says Sherri Kabaou, a Winrock program manager. “As a result, the women’s group now has an online presence and is advancing its organic farming business. The young girls in the group, along with their main collaborator, are determined to contribute to the business’s growth, a testament to the lasting impact of Riva’s training.”
Brown conducted hands-on sessions and guided participants through setting up and managing WhatsApp and Facebook Business accounts to help grow their business. She also performed a detailed SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis to identify both effective approaches and areas for improvement.
Brown’s analysis helped to highlight gaps in the organization’s digital space. She also helped the group establish English and French websites, organizing photo shoots and updating the visuals to reflect the group’s identity and product offerings, such as images of moringa leaves and a demonstration of tools used by employees. Brown also assisted in setting up an online ordering form in both English and French and demonstrated its use to the employees, helping to expand the group’s customer base and enhancing its ability to market products more effectively.
Additionally, she created training materials including digital marketing slides and brochures about their products. When she shared “the five P’s” of marketing, she would say it in English: “Product, price, promotion, place, and people.” It was then translated to French and Pulaar, a Fular language spoken in parts of West Africa, to expand their audience. By the end of her session, the women were equipped with new and improved tools to navigate the competitive online market, enhance their brand and drive online sales effectively.
In F2F’s blog about Brown’s selection as Volunteer of the Year, Youma Sow, the women’s group’s president, says “The most important aspect of this training is not what we learned or digital media, but participatory methods used by the volunteer to make these soft skills understandable for a group of ladies with no prior schooling and no computer skills. [Riva] used feedback from participants to develop a website, select pictures, create a logo, design pages and create an online ordering platform. She developed all the materials that we can access from our smartphones with low connectivity. These tools will be easy to use and share with our stakeholders who will see what we are doing on our farm.”
Sow adds that they were impressed not just by the information Brown provided, but how Diewo Mary — the local name given to Brown — presented it.
Winrock’s Sherri Kabaou says Brown supported specific F2F goals that made her the perfect candidate for the Volunteer of the Year award. She increased agricultural sector productivity, strengthened agricultural sector institutions, improved conservation and sustainable usage of environmental and natural resources through her focus on the group’s organic moringa, and expanded access to finance by opening new market channels to increase sales.
“About a year ago, I began referring to myself as a Global Servant Leader,” Brown says. “I then decided to always serve others in a manner that would align with that personal title. I was so surprised to win this award. This honor is a testament to being intentional about following a path that is right for you.”
As a global learning specialist with UCA’s Center for Global Learning and Engagement, Brown is dedicated to raising awareness on campus about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Brown has been committed to exposing students to international perspectives since she arrived in Arkansas from Mississippi in 2013. Her classes have completed service-learning projects with over 15 nonprofits, including those serving citizens in Kenya, Ghana, Zambia and Syria; her classes have also completed Collaborative Online International Learning projects with others in Ukraine, Kenya, Colombia, Mexico and in the U.S., in Michigan. Brown has served her community through disaster relief deployments to Florida, Louisiana, Guam and throughout Arkansas. She also serves on the board of directors and as a volunteer with the American Red Cross Serving Greater Arkansas.
About Farmer to Farmer:
According to USAID’s website, “The John Ogonowski and Doug Bereuter Farmer-to-Farmer Program (F2F) provides technical assistance from U.S. volunteers to farmers, farm groups, agribusinesses and other agriculture sector institutions in developing and transitional countries with the goal of promoting sustainable improvements in food security, agricultural processing, production, financing, and marketing. F2F leverages the expertise of volunteers from U.S. farms, universities, cooperatives, private agribusinesses and nonprofit farm organizations to respond to the local needs of host-country farmers and organizations. Volunteers [are] recruited from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. F2F represents the diversity, ingenuity and generosity of U.S. society to the world.
“The F2F program was initially authorized by Congress in the 1985 Farm Bill and funded through Title V of Public Law 480. The program was designated as the “John Ogonowski and Doug Bereuter Farmer-to-Farmer Program” in honor of one of the pilots killed September 11, 2001 and of former Congressman Bereuter, who initially sponsored the program.”
For information about volunteering through F2F, please visit https://farmer-to-farmer.org/.
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