Having had the once in a lifetime opportunity to travel to Guinea earlier this year, I was ecstatic to receive word of the possibility of continuing pesticide safety work in the beautiful mountain village of Dabola remotely. For those unfamiliar with the West African Country, agriculture in Guinea is diverse and impressive, with many cooperatives producing a wide array of tropical and traditional food crops promoting food security and enriching economies throughout the region. Shea butter and peanuts are important niche crops for the area, and unfortunately, they are susceptible to a wide variety of pest insects, fungi, and diseases. Training focused on identifying and diagnosing these issues as well as how to treat using sustainable practices. Less pesticide use not only ensures safety personally and environmentally, but also reduces overall costs to growers. Increased safety measures, including personal protective equipment (which we are all too familiar with, living in the times of COVID) were also discussed and encouraged.

Training from 4,790 Miles Away

One of the assets of having been to Guinea prior is that the wonderful in country team had taken the time to take me to markets to see exactly what pesticide, fertilizer, and fungicides were available to the growers. This knowledge made it so much easier to come up with a management plan that was realistic for the cooperative to follow. I was also teamed up with another amazing volunteer to serve as my translator, Elizabeth Bloom in Arkansas. We were able to meet over zoom before, during, and after the training to brainstorm ideas, do Q & A videos, and strengthen the material. In our case, remote was not limiting in the least! In fact, I would argue it created unique opportunities to work with others to strengthen and tailor programs to uniquely serve the needs of the cooperative groups of farmers. Many of the farmers have since continued the connection, sending photos, asking questions which has continued to add value and help proved to be a great way for me to stay involved. Having completed many F2F assignments, the remote opportunities have allowed for fluidity and a chance to stay connected to groups long after assignment is over, which has not been such a present feature in the in-person assignments. That being said, I will be on the first plane over if the opportunity to follow up in-person presents itself!

Call to Action

Anyone who may be on the fence regarding remote assignments should take the opportunity if they have it! It’s a wonderful way to extend your connection past the usual two weeks and it will help you improve the scope of your work in the long term. I cannot say enough about the Guinea Winrock team. Their kindness, dedication, humor, and drive will encourage any volunteer that their work is important and worthwhile.

In Guinea (West Africa), as with the rest of the world, the presence of COVID-19 has prompted the Government to initiate national lockdown quarantine measures. Once bustling, vibrant streets and markets have now slowed to a quiet hum as businesses and government agencies temporarily shut their doors. For Winrock’s Farmer-to-Farmer team, based in the capital city Conakry, this has meant the start of teleworking and the end of direct personal interaction with the American technical expert volunteers who form the backbone of our programmatic activity.

Yet at a time of great social strain, the people-to-people connections formed between Guinea and the United States are on full display. Ibrahima Diallo (Country Director) recently contacted more than 70 American volunteers that had worked with him in the past in Guinea. Wanting only to reconnect at a time of shared struggle, Diallo noted “I wanted to hear from them, share the echoes of their assignments and to invite them to return in Guinea for other assignments once this COVID-19 is over.”

The response was tremendous. Former volunteers from across the country wrote to Diallo and his team sending well-wishes and sharing their own stories of the importance of family and the bonds that transcend people and place.

Diallo and his team have initiated similar outreach to the network of community organizations we work to support across Guinea. He reports that COVID-19 has placed a serious financial burden onto already struggling areas. In turn, they have encouraged local organizations to use the media to advocate and share their messages through online media, radio, and TV to show the impact of COVID-19 on their activities.

While Diallo and his team adapt to this time of working without direct human interaction, the strength of our relations, across Guinea and over oceans, reveals that human connections will overcome this challenge.

Country Director, Ibrahima, Volunteer, Felipe Tejada and Driver, Bailo Diallo enjoying a tea break while on assignment in 2019

“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.

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/

Greetings from our Farmer-to-Farmer team here in the USA! Our U.S.-based team is incredibly grateful for our dedicated country staff, skilled volunteers and welcoming program hosts across the globe, without whom our work providing solutions for some of the world’s most complex social, agricultural, and environmental issues would not be possible. Enjoy this account of an international team coming together, along with country hosts, to continue our path forward in achieving our mission. Thank you! 

In November 2019, Winrock International organized a Farmer-to-Farmer Regional Meeting to reflect on the past year of implementation and plan for the upcoming year. This meeting, which took place in Senegal, marked my first time traveling to West Africa, and the greater African continent. The opportunity to participate in this meeting came because I work alongside colleagues in both our West African offices as well as our stateside offices in planning for, recruiting, and mobilizing U.S. volunteers to bring technical assistance to projects across West Africa through the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer Program. Though I have been working on the project since January, this marked my first opportunity to begin meeting our country staff who work on the project.

In Senegal, we were joined by our entire Senegal team, as well as all our country directors from Ghana, Guinea, Mali, and Nigeria. As we came together to discuss successes, challenges, and plans for the coming year, we shared laughter, meals, and more about ourselves with each other. As we discussed the program, the key themes for working together were flexibility, communication, and partnership. While this project is international, the same themes that make work successful on a local scale are also the keys to working with an international team. Having extensive time face to face with the country staff made all the difference in helping to more clearly understand their daily context on the ground in the countries we are working in. It also helped to build relationships with my colleagues – as being face to face for a week provides opportunities weekly or biweekly meetings by phone or video do not. Our week together in Senegal was full of learning – both in sessions in a meeting room and in field visits with hosts we have and continue to work with. In our meetings together we had sessions led by each of us that ranged from growing local partnerships to increasing our recruitment of experts as volunteers. During our field visits, we learned how our host organizations have grown and adapted their work as a result of volunteer assignments and recommendations and learned about continuing needs to be addressed by future volunteers. We visited several vocational training centers in Guinea that utilize our volunteers to train their staff and students, but more widely to increase technical knowledge and skills for their communities as a whole.

Following my time in Senegal, I traveled to Guinea with my colleague from the National Peace Corps Association, a sub-awardee under Winrock’s Farmer-to-Farmer project, and we spent 4 days with the Guinea office planning for the year, building relationships, and visiting hosts. Returning home and reflecting on my time in West Africa I am grateful for the hospitality of our country staff in both Senegal and Guinea, as well as our hosts who we visited in both countries. I am grateful to have better relationships with country staff, as well as more context for on the ground logistics in West Africa, which will help me to be a better recruiter and mobilizer for U.S. volunteers to assist with projects across West Africa as part of the program. I am excited for what the year ahead holds.