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/

As part of the ongoing and growing relationship between Winrock Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) in Guinea and the Peace Corps, Winrock’s Guinea County Director, Ibrahima Diallo, and Program Assistant, Ousmane Diallo attended and presented at the Peace Corps Partners’ Fair in May 2019. They shared information about F2F in Guinea, as well as the benefits of a partnership with Peace Corps, including having Peace Corps volunteers bring information back to the villages they are volunteering in, and through replication, expanding the best practices from F2F training more broadly throughout Guinea.

As a testament to the deepening relationship between both organizations, Peace Corps Guinea Country Director requested two F2F volunteers to support their Food Security Training, focusing on beekeeping and nutrition. Scopes of work are currently being developed with the dual purpose of training both Peace Corps volunteers and their beneficiaries, as well as other hosts in Guinea.

Volunteer Andrew Tonks works with Peace Corp and GAIN members.

By deepening the relationship with Peace Corps, Winrock is achieving the F2F goals in Guinea of improving rural livelihood development and agriculture education and training, as well as promoting agricultural growth and cross-cultural understanding through technical assistance from skilled F2F volunteers.

Volunteer Janet Buresh looks on as Peace Corp and COJDAGUI member work together during training.

Volunteer with the members of the Association of Mushroom Producers Ashanti (AoMPA)

As I am stepping into my eighties, I recognize nothing more rewarding than being associated with scientific research and being able to reach out and help our society and the international community. The latter became possible for me via the wonderful oyster mushroom.  I am thankful for the Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) program, funded by USAID, for opening up the wide world of serving and helping my fellow human beings in developing communities improve the quality of their food enriched with mushroom protein.

Discussion with the group outside, using the flip chart

This time it was in Kenyasi in the Ashanti region of Ghana, Africa. This was my third assignment in Ghana. The wonderful oyster mushroom is lending itself for cultivation and fruiting against all the odds of unfavorable conditions. The group I trained is a small association of mushroom growers and they are highly motivated and interested, but they are in need of more technical skills when growing crops of this kind. For many years they used narrow neck soda bottles for spawn preparation and small heat resistant plastic bags for the partially composted sawdust as a substrate for cultivation. It works but was rather inefficient, slow and cumbersome. Then they reached out for training.

Volunteer demonstrating the use of a HEPA filter he brought for constructing a Laminar Flow Hood

We adapted the small heat resistant plastic bags of theirs to be spawn bags instead of the soda bottles and worked together to increase their awareness of and ability to use other plant materials readily available in their environments such as banana leaves, and coconut husks. Of course, other kinds of hay, grain plant stalks, and straw are also useful. Specifically, this nation is becoming self-sufficient with rice cultivation making rice stalks their primary alternative as a substrate for mushroom cultivation. The training was mainly held in an outdoor classroom, often moving inside to the group’s mushroom incubation room. So it allowed the participant’s good exercise each time they had to move their chairs back and forth.

The presentations were centered on discussions rather than just a one-way lecture. The group particularly liked using the flip paper chart as it will stay as an open document for them. We enjoyed making a mushroom pie, mushroom pizza, pickled mushroom, and mushroom kababs, using their high tech charcoal oven.

Making and trying the mushroom pizza!

From April 22 to May 8, 2019, I had the pleasure of working on a USAID Farmer-to-Farmer assignment in Nzerekore, Guinea, West Africa.  The implementer for the assignment was Winrock International and this organization took very good care of me.  After departing the capital, Conakry, my driver, translator, and I traveled 1000 kilometers by road to Nzerekore.  It took about 22 hours of mostly bone-jarring roads.

Crossing wooden bridge with F2F driver Bailo

Nzerekore is known as the forested region and produces oil palm (locally called red oil), rubber, cacao, and coffee.  As this was my first time working with oil and rubber crops, I learned a lot about growing the crops and how the oil is processed.  It is used locally for cooking and is highly sought after, especially as Ramadan was approaching.

Discussing proper pesticide use in the field

My assignment was specifically to address pesticide safety issues focusing on the appropriate use of pesticide products and in the correct amount.  The group was enthusiastic and asked many good questions.  All of the farmers used glyphosate as an herbicide and much of my time was used to explain how to use the product most effectively.  I use glyphosate on my farm so I was able to give the farmers first-hand knowledge.

Guinea is a warm and friendly country.  I never felt threatened or uncomfortable.  One evening I ate some food that made me a little ill and I had to take a day off from training. The day I was recuperating, a group of 8 farmers came to my hotel to wish me good health and offered to bring me food for a speedy recovery.  The empathy shown was most welcomed.

Translator, Damba, Interpreting sprayer calibration to farmers

Despite the physical hardships in this country, the eagerness of these farmers to learn and the warmth and hospitality they showed, made this assignment a very satisfying experience.

Oil Palm farm family and F2F volunteer David Ringuette

Ms. Neelam Canto-lugo, adjunct professor at Yuba College in California, signed the agreement with EnerGaia on May 12, 2019, to provide financial support that will help develop women contract farmers for household production of spirulina in order to generate new income opportunities and empower women in rural Bangladesh. EnerGaia is a private company focusing on spirulina production, processing, and marketing of fresh spirulina and value-added spirulina products to Thailand, Singapore, and India.

Ms. Canto-lugo came to Bangladesh multiple times in between 2017 and 2018 as a volunteer to help the youth entrepreneurship development initiative of Winrock International’s Asia Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F, 2013-2018) Program funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She conducted training on soft skills development, women empowerment, and curriculum development to build the capacity of the trainers and youth beneficiaries. She was also a recipient of Farmer-to-Farmer Volunteer of the Year Award. 

After the Asia F2F project closed in September 2018, Ms. Canto-lugo kept in touch with the Winrock staff and her past hosts. She traveled to Bangladesh using her own funds to follow-up on the progress of the organizations and their beneficiaries, as well as conducted further training.

During one of these follow-up visits, Ms. Canto-lugo connected with the staff of the USAID Feed the Future Asia Innovative Farmers Activity (AIFA, 2015-2019) project, implemented by Winrock. Through those connections, she met with EnerGaia Bangladesh representatives and visited their spirulina research lab at the Department of Horticulture of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University in Dhaka. She learned about EnerGaia’s initiative to implement spirulina contract farming focused on providing income opportunities for rural women. Impressed with the potential benefits for the rural women, Ms. Canto-lugo promised to provide financial support for EnerGaia.

AIFA’s main mandate is to source, validate and market innovative agricultural technologies and practices for improving the lives of rural farmers. EnerGaia was selected competitively as one of the companies that would have its spirulina production technology tested and validated in Bangladesh’s local context. The AIFA project supported EnerGaia’s expansion into Bangladesh to benefit communities in need of more nutritious food and additional income opportunities. The project also worked to find funding opportunities for EnerGaia to establish a pilot spirulina production village in Khulna to empower women through improved livelihoods. Currently, EnerGaia is establishing a Spirulina Production and Training Center in Batiaghata Upazilla, Khulna District to train and develop spirulina contract farmers.

In May 2019, Ms. Neelam Canto-lugo returned to Bangladesh using her own funds and signed the agreement with EnerGaia to provide financial support. She visited the location of the spirulina production training center and met with the local women. Ms. Canto-lugo’s support will help develop 30 women spirulina contract farmers in Batiaghata under the EnerGaia contract farming model. These women will receive hands-on training from EnerGaia and a system consisting of 20 tanks (for each person) along with other essentials to produce spirulina. EnerGaia will provide technical assistance to the contract farmers for the production and buy back 80% of the production and encourage the rest 20% for family consumption. The initiative could change the lives of the women and their families and empower them with their own sources of income.