“If our hopes of building a better and safer world are to become more than wishful thinking, we will need the engagement of volunteers more than ever.” — Kofi Annan

This quote from Kofi Annan really resonates, given everything that our world is facing these days. AND – it’s National Volunteer Week! Now, more than ever, I think we can all benefit from inspirational examples of American volunteers making an impact around the world.

In the last year, Winrock engaged 70 volunteers on assignments in nine countries, primarily through the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Program. These volunteers donated a collective 1,400 days of time to 59 host organizations, lending their skills and expertise on topics ranging from agricultural production and processing to curriculum development and pedagogy, to business planning and financial management. They have empowered farmers and entrepreneurs; strengthened training institutions and schools; improved quality, diversity, and safety of food products; and directly improved the lives of thousands of individuals in rural Africa and Asia.

This week, in particular, we celebrate these noble and meaningful efforts.

Here are some of our volunteers in action in the last year:

Volunteer, Dr. Hameed, shows off the mushroom pizza the Mushroom Producers Association made together in Ghana

Volunteer Kerry Richards and a local farmer practice plant transplanting in Guinea

Volunteer Gary Wingenbach visits demonstration plots and research project on the campus of Adeyemi College of Education in Nigeria

Volunteer Olumide Mitchelle Makanjuola poses with the women of AFSM and AWLAE in Mali after her workshop on building successful business practices

Volunteer Dr. Kassama works with CLCOP women to create enriched flour to sell in Senegal

In addition to imparting valuable – and oftentimes, critical – technical knowledge to enable people to improve their livelihoods, our volunteers also contribute to increased cross-cultural understanding, building a bridge between our countries and reinforcing human connections.

Many of our volunteers stay in touch with their host organizations and field staff after the end of their assignment. It’s been heartwarming to see an increase in this outreach during the coronavirus crisis, with volunteers and field staff reaching out to each other with concern and solidarity and to deepen the bonds that they formed over the course of their assignments. Especially now, these are such important reminders that we are all in this together.

THANK YOU, volunteers, for your generosity, kindness, hard work, expertise, and perseverance. You have made a difference, in more ways than one.

And though we are currently pausing international volunteer travel due to the global coronavirus pandemic, we are anxious to continue to serve our beneficiary communities around the world. We hope to resume travel later this year – and as always, open volunteer opportunities will be posted on our website: www.winrock.org/volunteer.

My mother-in-law has lived a long and full life because of the kindness and sacrifices made by an American volunteer. She loves to tell the story of her life and how her daughter was saved by a daring doctor during the Nigerian Civil War.

In 1967, she was in labor for one week and risked losing her child. At this time medical facilities; where they existed in any form, were either destroyed through air raids or their personnel had fled to safety. In the face of extreme danger, she and her husband sneaked under the cover of darkness to the sounds of gunfire and mortar into a nearby medical facility where an American doctor worked. On arrival at the medical facility, they were met by the lonely figure of a night watchman. He was there to guard the American doctor as she waited for the next evacuation by her home government.

The situation at the medical facility seemed hopeless. The building where thousands of lives had been saved was destroyed during an air raid; power supply to the medical facility was also affected, there was neither personal protective equipment nor basic equipment required for this level of medical work available. However, as in the case of Farmer-to-Farmer volunteers; in the eyes of this doctor, there was a glimmer of hope. The volunteer doctor chose to help this couple despite the challenges and the danger she herself faced. Within a few hours of arriving at the medical facility, the baby was born, the weeklong trauma had ended, and mother and baby were in good health.

Then the beleaguered couple awoke to the realization that they had no toiletries, napkins, baby clothes, etc. More so, the couple and their baby who were deemed discharged on arrival had no means to return home that night since their safety wasn’t guaranteed inside the hospital.

Going above and beyond, the volunteer doctor did not only provide her skills and the materials for the satisfactory execution of her work, she again filled the gap by volunteering to drive the couple and their newborn baby that night back to their village. The couple were eternally grateful to this doctor but were worried whether she ever made it back safely to the medical facility. They later heard from the lonely night watchman, that ‘the American government came and took the Doctor home;’ meaning that she made it back safely to the medical facility.

The above story has often made me reflect on volunteerism and the motivating factors for people to help one another, even under precarious circumstances. While Winrock’s Farmer-to-Farmer volunteers are never in danger like the volunteer who helped my mother in law, they certainly face challenging situations during their Farmer-to-Farmer assignments. Every Farmer-to-Farmer assignment is unique, and every volunteer is equally unique. Every volunteer has a similar or more touching story written or told about them. Stories they may never get to read or hear told.

My mother in law has met many of our Farmer-to-Farmer volunteers while they have been in Nigeria. The actions of the volunteer doctor many years ago eternally endeared her to Farmer-to-Farmer volunteers. When I asked her why she told me; ‘… they are humble and committed, they are also friendly, they respect our cultures, they are ever-ready to learn and to share, they work and make the best use of what materials they find around, they are exposed to all kinds of risks … the work these volunteers do is invaluable.’

Whether volunteers are on the frontlines providing support in a time of war, or poverty, or hunger, or infectious disease, volunteers are one and the same – they are motivated by the need to give. Like my parent’s in-law, these volunteers understand that there are risks. Like the American doctor, volunteers know the potential risks – measurable and hard to measure risks; however, to these folks, the benefits of one saved life and the sanctity of life far outweighs the challenges posed.

At this point and on this occasion of National Volunteer Week 2020 in the United States, I join the good-hearted people of the United States of America and the millions of people the world over whose lives have been impacted in one way or the other by F2F volunteers to doff my hat in honor of this group of wonderful people. I would also like to appreciate volunteers across the world who have given up their safety, time, personal comfort, and other resources and to help the most vulnerable through the COVID-19 crisis – these are the real heroes of our time.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps, and 59 years later we take this week to celebrate all the ways Peace Corps has made a difference at home and abroad.  Since 1961, more than 240,000 Americans have served our country and the global community as Peace Corps Volunteers, living and working alongside local leaders to catalyze change. Under USAID’s Farmer-to-Farmer Program, Winrock has partnered with the National Peace Corps Association to tap into this network of Peace Corps alums in order to field highly skilled and experienced volunteers to West Africa. In addition, Winrock has also created connections with the Peace Corps in Guinea and Senegal to facilitate training and technical assistance. Peace Corps Volunteers and their counterparts are then able to bring the knowledge and skills they learn back to their communities, increasing the spread and impact of Farmer-to-Farmer Volunteers. In honor of Peace Corps Week, we thank all volunteers, past and present, each time you give your expertise and time you help build the future! 

“We females eat what is left.” That was just one of the many tough issues discussed on ways to reduce malnutrition during the first Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) partnership assignment between Winrock and the Peace Corps/Guinea. By all accounts, this strategy of F2F volunteers working with Peace Corps Volunteers and their volunteer counterparts in a practical skills workshop was a success.

The objective of the trip, titled Training of Trainers (TOT) in Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture and Behavior Change, required integration between multiple disciplines. The assignment challenged me to put the experience I had gained on linking agricultural resources to solving nutritional problems for the past 40 years.  The undertaking necessitated using an approach which would be a dance between the art of communication and the science of agriculture, food and nutrition.

My main task was to facilitate a TOT workshop with Peace Corps Volunteers and local volunteer counterparts from their community on how to use behavioral change communications (BCC) to help households make their agricultural investments more nutrition-sensitive (NSA) as well as more specific in order to close their identified dietary gaps.

The challenge I faced was clear in the preparation stage. Unlike some other African countries, there is little written about Guinea, especially its agriculture and nutrition situation, and this made designing a quality program even more tricky as the trainees were not experienced outreach professionals in either agriculture, nutrition or behavioral change communications.  Moreover, for most of the local participants, this was their very first experience attending a workshop so far from home. These many challenges resulted in multiple emails with draft documents going back and forth between me and the Peace Corps staff (host) as well as with Winrock/ Guinea staff.

After arriving in Guinea and holding initial briefings with F2F Winrock and Peace Corps management staff in Conakry, I proceeded with 12 people in a single-vehicle for 125 miles — an 8-hour drive — to Mamou. The road, if one could call it that, was certainly one for the record books. I nicknamed it the “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” road adventure.

The venue for the workshop was Guinea’s forestry center, Ecole Nationale des Agents Techniques des Eaux et Forets (ENATEF), just outside of Mamou City. The site was wonderful as the center was surrounded by forest with all its diverse vegetation and sounds. Its magnificent diversity served as a living laboratory for the practicum exercises.

One of the big workshop communication challenges faced right off the bat was the need to work in five languages at the same time: English, French, Malinke, Pulaar and Soussou.  Fortunately, we had with us Peace Corps staff who spoke at least one of the three local languages. Having worked in similar multiple language situations throughout my career, the workshop was designed from the start to have lots of small group work so that the participants could carry on in their language group, thus reducing the time needed for multiple translations.

Since the term “Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture” is still evolving within the global community of practice, the group decided to operationalize NSA according to their local situation. They essentially agreed that it meant practical actions that could be taken throughout a crop’s cycle to enhance and or preserve the nutrient quality of that crop.

As the workshop took shape, a distinct trend was emerging.  Some Peace Corps Volunteers were keen to learn about the technical aspects of growing certain crops, especially the ones they were introducing to their community as part of their 2-year assignment: orange-fleshed sweet potato and moringa, while their Guinean counterparts seemed more interested in exploring effective way to communicate specific behavioral changes that need to be made so that home food systems are nutrient- and nutrition-sensitive.

It became clear that while technical improvements and solutions were identified by the group for improving crop production and post-production as well as dietary intake issues, culture seems to trump every technical subject — hence the importance of identifying strategic BCC messages for each issue.

Through group discussions, a few Peace Corps Volunteers began to understand that in order to have a few “quick wins” and build credibility with their community during their two-year assignment, they should look at ways to enhance post-harvest through improvements in existing practices. Their emphasis on the introduction and acceptance of new crops by subsistence households, while important, takes longer than their assignment time.

There were four key themes that came up continuously:

• Start with what households were doing right with their food system. The good news is that households already grow a wide variety of crops consisting of a large diversity of calorie- and nutrient-dense crops and their main meal is complete as it consists of a starch (usually rice) with a sauce (oil, legume and a dark green leafy vegetable). One of the key challenges mentioned by the participants was not so much technical issues but their cultural traditions around who eats what and in what order.
• Identify gaps in their cropping system, usually more vegetable protein (peas, beans, legumes) and in their household meals, especially for the most at risk nutritionally (mothers and young children)
• Identify local solutions based on existing knowledge, skills and resources. If it is not available at the local market, forget it as a “solution.”
• Identify a range of locally acceptable behavioral change methods that a household can do with minimal disruption to their existing food consumption pattern.

By the end of the five-day exercise, the workshop participants had designed their own location-specific illustrated communication materials for use with their community as well as a clear roadmap of activities for closing dietary gaps from existing crops. Clearly, they valued the experiential learning approach and could see that their malnutrition issues were solvable by tweaking the use of the resources they have now.

A bonus from the training was the Peace Corps staff indicated that their own capacity had been built as a result of this exercise, especially regarding behavioral change messaging. One long term outcome of this assignment is that the Peace Corps staff will be presenting this NSA/BCC workshop to its Peace Corps Volunteers going forward.

In sum, it was my pleasure to work with this group of volunteers who live in hardship conditions and yet showed so much dedicated to finding solutions together.

To read about a Peace Corps Volunteers experience you can go here:

https://winrock.org/volunteer_blog/voices-from-the-field/

Continuing on with our Field Staff introductions- we are now doing a series on our excellent accountants. They make sure our finances are in order and our day to day operations move smoothly. As is true of most of our field staff, they work closely with colleagues that they have never met, including at HQ in the US, so being able to communicate across time zones, cultures and email is extremely important. It also makes any chance to meet the folks you work with a fun and interesting experience, which Justina got to do when she traveled to Nairobi to receive training on new systems and processes. 

Hi, I am Alamba, Justina Kangyang. Finance & Admin. Manager for the West Africa Farmer-to-Farmer Project- Nigeria. I have been on the F2F project for 3 years 5 months now and have 12 years’ experience in development work. It may also interest you to know that Winrock International gave me my first opportunity in development work on the Aids Impact Mitigation (AIM) project for three and a half years. I am an associate member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and with an MBA degree from the Nigerian Defense Academy, a post-graduate diploma from Obafemi Awolowo University and Higher National Diploma (HND) in Accounting from the Plateau State Polytechnic, Barkin Ladi. My Secondary education was at St. Louis College, Jos and primary education at RCM Primary School, Giring, Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria.

I am one individual who loves to laugh a lot, watch Hispanic telenovelas and playing phone games.

My work experience over the years: I am currently the Finance and Administrative Manager as stated earlier. Before joining Winrock, I worked as the Awards Coordinator with USAID funded Systems Transformed for Empowered Actions and Enabling Responses for VCs (STEER) project, as the State Finance Officer – Niger with the DFID funded State Accountability and Voice Initiative (SAVI) project, and at the Accountant Health Hub, where I managed funds under the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded Informed Decisions for Actions to Improve Maternal and Newborn Health (IDEAS) project. I developed the budget which won Health Hub the project. Before getting into the development sector I worked at Plateau State Ministry of Science and Technology as a Data Processing Officer and at Crest Hotel & Gardens as Receptionist/Cashier.

Justina, Ibrahim, and Souleyman in Nairobi

With Winrock, I have had the opportunity to experience multi-project reporting on the MARKETS, SAFE, REEP and F2F. I have gained more experience in project closeouts over the years. I love the fact the financial reporting has been revolutionized from excel to QuickBooks and electronic documentation. This new system has made work more interesting and educating. I am one who loves learning new skills and I am excited to say that I have learned to upload wire request and documents on SharePoint, using DocuSign, and how to have effective meetings on Skype. All those remote sessions with the IT team are a wonderful experience and a boost to my IT skills.  I bet my colleagues in finance were as excited as I was at the finance training in Kenya. Putting faces to names I have worked with for years has a good feeling too it. I had a swell time with Souleyman and Ibrahim (both accountants from Guinea) at the KICC, where we viewed Nairobi from the tower. Getting to meet Shawn Cathey and Mike Myers? Wow, that was the bomb and the Nairobi team, Nicodemus, Arthur, and Veronica were all really cool. It was such a nice experience having Nicodemus come over to Nigeria to coach me on QuickBooks and now I am a bundle of knowledge on the software. I look forward to learning more with the advent of the new Regional Controller.

Justina with the other Winrock Accountants Ibrahim and Souleyman

Working with the Nigeria team is homely, with Mike Bassey heading the team it’s joyous. When I lost my grandma in October last year, the support I got was amazing. I am fortunate to have a team like this one and I am glad I am part of this amazing organization. Overall my experience in Winrock is one in a million. I will not forget to mention my ladies back there at HQ, Loretta, and Sherri, are wonderful to work with. It was lovely meeting Sherri during her last visit to Nigeria and I look forward to meeting Loretta, someday in the future.

Ibrahim, Shawn, Justina and Mike in Nairobi

The fourth in our series of introductory blogs again comes from Senegal, which has the largest number of Winrock F2F staff in-country. 

My name is Youssouph Sane and I’m one of the Winrock Drivers. After I earned a Baccalaureate degree I joined the Army for two years where I got my military driving license which afterward turned it to a civil driving license.

I then worked for security companies like Phoenix and Sagam. For Sagam, I was posted as a vigil in a bank. After work, I used to volunteer as a driving school instructor for one year and a half. I was inspired when English people who came to the bank needed help and I struggled to give them information with my low-level English. So I started English classes for four hours a week. It was not enough for me but it was fine. After 4 years I got a promotion as a driver in the Sagam security company so I  stopped English classes. It was an opportunity and an experience for me to become familiar with Senegalese traffic regulations and I realized really how hard it is to drive in a big city like Dakar for more than eight hours a day or at night without stopping. One day, as I was passing by Winrock’s office I saw the Winrock sign and thought to apply for a job; so I did and was called for an interview. A couple of weeks later I got the job.

My favorite pastimes are exercising; watching soccer and movies on tv; being with my lovely daughters and conversing with people.

Working for an American company was my dream because of their hardworking attitude, seriousness, and pay. It is also an opportunity to improve my English.

I have learned a lot from F2F volunteers about pruning, making compost, and constructing drip irrigation from local material but I haven’t applied any of the volunteers’ technique so far because I have yet to have the opportunity. Volunteers helped me a lot because being with them pushes me to practice English and now I know many things about American culture.

Pick up/drop off, assisting for the volunteers and supporting the staff are the most interesting parts of my job.

Once there was a volunteer who didn’t find her luggage when she arrived at Dakar’s airport. So we canceled the trip for the next day; therefore, she stayed in Dakar longer than planned. In order to catch up and not change her training agenda, we had to make the return trip in one day, therefore, we traveled the whole day from Kolda to Dakar (a 7-10 hour car ride) and it was very tough journey because of the distance.

Senegal Team