• About
  • Our Work
  • Join
  • Partner
  • Media
EMAIL SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER

Sign-up for monthly updates on Winrock's work around the world.

VOLUNTEER BLOG

Rich Illustrations and Examples for Micro-gardening

Posted on February 24, 2017 by F2F volunteer, Bernard Randrianarisoa

“My assignment in Senegal with Winrock International on micro-garden was such wonderful experience. It enriched my knowledge of human development and of the integrity of cultural diversity as fundamental keys to ensure sustainable development and social cohabitation.

My mission could not have been completed without the humble professional support from both the Djilor Professional Training Center and Winrock Senegal. They made my journey in Senegal successful. From the beginning, a specialist from Winrock Senegal gave me a splendid tour of Dakar city and the ongoing micro-gardening projects. One of the micro-gardening projects was managed by the city hospital and the other by a women’s group. The tour enlightened me about the potential that micro-garden projects can contribute to poverty alleviation in an urban area. Our introductory session with the Djilor Professional Center was a great opportunity to observe how a local institution was committed to pivot local rural development through varieties of training programs.

The board members of the Djilor Professional Training Center guided us to meet with four Women’s Vegetables Farmer Groups and to assess their agricultural practice in the field. All of the four Women’s groups have been functional for 20 or 30 years. Thus, it was very important for me to learn their experiences, success, challenges, adaptations, and motivations keeping them running for that long period of time. What are their goals and objectives? How have they tackled problems together? This visit helped me to adjust the training themes to adapt to the field contexts. I am so thankful of their sincerity to share with us their capital knowledge on gardening and vegetable farming. The field visit was successfully completed with the diligent supports from the Director of the Djilor Professional Training Center, the two Assistants from Winrock Senegal who professionally translated every discussion with local people.


I trained approximately 19 people. The trainees included all of the Instructors and Professionals of the Djilor Professional Training Center, two Peace Corps Volunteers, and two representatives of the Women’s Vegetable Farmer Groups of the commune of Djilor. They were very enthusiastic to attend the training and greatly participated in every discussion and activities. The two women from the Women’s Vegetable Farmer Group proudly shared their field experiences, which provided rich illustrations and examples for micro-gardening practice.”

Posted in AET, Africa, Senegal, Volunteer Feedback | Tagged AET, capacity building, F2F, Farmer-to-Farmer, knowledge transfer, senegal

The Entrepreneurial Spirit of Myanmar Farmers

Posted on February 16, 2017 by F2F volunteer, Richard Edwards

I had met the country director of Winrock’s office in Myanmar, Dr. Ai Thanda Kyaw, about two years ago while on an assignment in Nepal. While in Nepal for a regional meeting, she expressed a desire to visit the birth place of Buddha. The site was near the town, where my wife, Mary, and I were on an assignment, and we were asked if we wanted to go with her to the site. Naturally we said yes. During our time together we discussed possibilities for one of us coming to Myanmar on a Farmer-to-Farmer assignment. About two years later, I finally made it.

Upon arrival to Yangon, I was struck by the cleanliness of the airport and how quickly one moves through the customs and immigration process which is a sharp contrast to many other developing countries that I’ve traveled to.

The assignment was to teach basic record keeping and financial management techniques to “farmers” in two regions of the country, Mandalay and Yangon. I put the quote marks around farmers as few participants are what we in the USA would call traditional “row crop” farmers. Attendees were citrus growers, mushroom growers, mango producers and processors, and vegetable producers.

In the capital city, I was expecting the urban and rural environment to be similar to what I’ve seen in other urban environments in the developing world, but I was entirely wrong. Both Yangon and Mandalay are busy metropolitan areas with multiple construction sites and heavy traffic.

The farms I visited were often down miles of bad roads, but they were well kept and from the production side, well managed.

After overnighting in Yangon, Dr. Thet Khaing (TK), Technical Officer with Winrock’s Myanmar office, and I, flew to the assignment site in Mandalay.

One of the most interesting items I had was a frozen slice of mango served on a Popsicle stick. One of the participants invited us to her farm after one of the training sessions, and besides growing mangos, she had a small processing plant where she peels, removes the seed, slices them in half, inserts the stick, and then flash-freezes the mango. They are then exported to Korea. They are delicious.

I was given several business cards, and the names listed became a point of discussion with TK. It seems the people of Myanmar have no last names (or surname in the USA). People have between two and four names, but one cannot discern who their parents are or any other family member from those names. We jokingly wondered what they would write down as the surname on any form needed to enter another country.

I want to go back to the assignment, and reflect on the entrepreneurial spirit exhibited by the people who came to the training. All seemed to be quite successful in their businesses even though only one of those attending said they kept any kind of records. It is a cash society with interest rates hovering around 20% if you can find a lending source.

I was blessed to receive several samples of products that were being produced by the members of the groups. They ranged from sweets to fancy flip flops. The sweets were consumed prior to leaving and the flip flops, upon arrival in the USA, were taken over by Mary as they were too small for me. Upon completion of the training I made the participants raise their right hands and affirm that they would start keeping good records. I guess the monitoring and evaluation phase of the assignment, which will be conducted in six to twelve months, will see if they have begun to do so.

The country director indicated there might be an opportunity for both Mary and I to return to the country, and we would welcome the opportunity.

Posted in Asia, Myanmar | Tagged capacity building, Farmer-to-Farmer, knowledge transfer, Myanmar

Greening Up Neighborhoods in Senegal

Posted on January 23, 2017 by Mark Cain, Winrock F2F Volunteer

Farming is a constant responsibility, but luckily we get a little time off in the winter when the crops are dormant. It’s the time I look to broaden my awareness of the world, and traveling to countries with intact agricultural societies is my favorite way to do that. I just returned from my 4th Winrock International/USAID Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) assignment, this time in southern Senegal, teaching micro-gardening skills to trainers at the Horticulture Initiation Center in Ziguinchor. Micro-gardening is the growing of crops in the smallest of spaces: in recycled containers, or woven poly grain bags, even impromptu raised beds lined with brick and lined with plastic—whatever is available. Micro-gardening was identified some 15 years ago by the FAO as a way to provide access to fresh vegetables to the urban poor and unemployed, an increasing problem with the constant movement to cities from rural farmlands. We took a look at the existing projects in Dakar, based on planting tables using peanut hulls and rice hulls as a planting medium, and chemical nutrient solutions as fertilizer. As a certified organic grower, I of course immediately started looking for natural alternatives to the expensive imported fertilizer, and later we found just that: homegrown fertilizer produced using on-site chicken coops and vermicompost.

Arriving at the Horticulture Initiation Center in Ziguinchor, I felt immediately in my element, surrounded by beds of lettuce and cabbage, with the students busy each morning as we arrived, watering, shaping and fertilizing beds, planting and weeding. During the four-day session, I introduced both technologies from the States (‘Smart-Pot’ planting containers, seedling plug trays, hand-held seeders) and from Kenya (vertical grow bags and sack gardening); and in the afternoon practicums we adjourned to the garden to plant.

One afternoon, the only woman in class, Amy Diedhiou, invited us to visit her rice field where she was finishing up bundling the rice to carry home and thresh. While in the field visiting with Amy and her sisters, Amy’s husband called on her cell phone and asked to talk to me. He said, “Mark, thank you so much for coming to Senegal. We have a lot of energy, but no means, and we can’t see the way forward. Please think very carefully about this for us.” I spent the rest of the evening pondering this. What are the wisest investments that can help transform these subsistence growers into market producers? The question is pressing, open-ended, and creative…and will not be forgotten.

We spent time in class discussing the expansion of micro-gardening to micro-market farming, and the importance of crop choices for maximum profits and tight crop scheduling for year-round marketing. Hopefully, all these topics will be included and expanded on by the trainers in their respective horticultural schools.

When farmers meet farmers across oceans of cultural difference, hearts expand and we recognize each other immediately. I can’t think of a better way for an agriculturalist to spend their ‘off-season’ than to meet and share with their global counterparts–everyone is enriched from that meeting.

 

Posted in AET, Africa, Senegal, Volunteer Feedback | Tagged AET, capacity building, F2F, knowledge transfer, senegal

Improved Business Skills to Complement Technical Skills

Posted on October 27, 2016 by F2F volunteer, Andy Lohof

In June, I had the honor and pleasure of traveling to St. Louis, Senegal to work with CONCEPT. I worked with CONCEPT’s dedicated training staff to develop a training program for artisans and agricultural processors.

In Senegal, per capita income is only $1,000 (less than 2% of that of the United States) and life expectancy is 66 years (vs 79 in the United States). Poverty in Senegal results in part from the weakness of the private sector and the shortage of strong business skills and behaviors.

The Senegalese non-profit organization CONCEPT has trained artisans and food processing micro-entrepreneurs in production. Artisans include carpenters, and food processing micro-entrepreneurs transform millet and other crops into food products. For example, some of CONCEPT’s trainees make a popular dish called “thiakry” from millet and milk and sell it on the local market.

After production training, the CONCEPT staff realized that the trainees also needed improved business skills to complement their technical skills to succeed in their microenterprises. CONCEPT solicited Winrock’s assistance to train its trainers in management and entrepreneurship. This training was intended to enable CONCEPT’s trainers to help artisans and food processing micro-entrepreneurs develop stronger businesses.

F2F Volunteer, Andy Lohof assists CONCEPT work group

Under the USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer program with Winrock, I spent two weeks in Senegal training CONCEPT in management and entrepreneurship. Training was highly participatory with numerous games, exercises, case studies, and discussions. Topics included entrepreneurial behaviors, communication, marketing, communication, recordkeeping, financial analysis, and business planning. After the workshop, the CONCEPT trainers prepared a training session of their own to present to each other and to practice in preparation for training of local micro-entrepreneurs.

The training was held in St Louis, on the coast of northern Senegal near the border with Mauritania. The island of St Louis near the mouth of the Senegal River is on the UNESCO World Heritage list due to its past role as capital of Senegal and its distinctive colonial architecture. Although tourism helps the local economy, business activity needs to be stronger to raise living standards.

Since I visited during the Muslim fast of Ramadan, most of the local population was not eating or drinking during daylight hours. Although a day without food or liquid in the heat of St Louis can be tiring, the CONCEPT staff participated very actively in the training and showed strong motivation to pass on their learnings to their beneficiaries.

F2F volunteer with CONCEPT participants

F2F volunteer with CONCEPT participants

 

To me, human capital is more important than financial capital. My hope is that CONCEPT’s trainers will be able to empower micro-entrepreneurs in St. Louis to strengthen their businesses, thereby improving their lives and those of their employees and families.

Posted in Africa, Senegal | Tagged AET, capacity building, F2F, knowledge transfer, senegal

Improved Understanding of Agriculture Production Through Crop Models

Posted on October 11, 2016 by F2F volunteer, Dr. Pingping Jiang

It was towards the end of the Monsoon season when I arrived in Nepal in mid-August. This is the time of the year when mountains are in peak green, saturated with season’s moisture, all lives are thriving.

My volunteer assignment in Nepal for the USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer Program with Winrock International was to provide a 10-day long training workshop on crop modeling applications to university faculty to add capacity in collegiate research and teaching. My host university was the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science (IAAS) of the Tribhuvan University, located in Sundarbazar of Lamjung District, a remote campus located about 100 km northwest of Kathmandu, but a 6 hour or so journey by car on a winding two-lane mountain road that bumps through many layers of ridges and valleys, sharing traffic with long distance buses, trucks, livestock, and local people carrying fresh animal fodder around their foreheads. Every direction we turned terraced rice paddy fields were in sight, high on the hill slopes or down by the rivers at valley bottoms, as long as the monsoon rain is here, rice is everywhere humans can reach!

My workshop had about 25 participants with backgrounds in soil science, agronomy, horticulture, plant pathology, and agricultural economics. The majority of them work and live locally on the IAAS campus, but a few participants travelled a day from sister campuses to Sundarbazar to attend the workshop. I was glad to see this much interest in crop model applications that include crop growth and yield simulation, crop management effects on yield, and weather variability and climate change on yield dynamics, to list a few. Furthermore, crop models are also very effective teaching tools that help students understand the interactions between plant, soil and atmosphere, connecting principles in crop physiology, biophysics, agro-climatology, and other disciplines. I greatly enjoyed working with my class for their proactivity in discussing their real-world problems and willingness in helping each other when diverse levels of progress appeared at times during the hands-on exercises.

It is a valuable and unforgettable experience to travel and work in Nepal, it is such a beautiful and unique country, and I appreciate the Winrock F2F program and my host university IAAS for making it possible. I hope my class continues to make progress in using the crop model applications, either having a better understanding of how they work, or applying them in their research or teaching.

img_6804

Dr. Jiang with Tribhuvan University Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science faculty

Posted in Asia, Nepal | Tagged agriculture education & training, capacity building, knowledge transfer, Nepal
ABOUT FARMER-TO-FARMER WINROCK VOLUNTEER ASSISTANCE

SUBSCRIBE TO POSTS

Loading

ARCHIVE

  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • December 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011

CATEGORIES

  • AET
  • Africa
    • Ghana
    • Senegal
  • Asia
  • Bangladesh
  • Cuba
  • El Salvador
  • Ethiopia
  • Field Staff
  • Guinea
  • Kenya
  • Latin America
  • Mali
  • Myanmar
  • Nepal
  • Nigeria
  • Postharvest
  • Rural Livelihoods
  • Senegal
  • Spotlights
  • Volunteer Feedback
  • Volunteer of the Month
  • Winrock Staff
WinrockIntl
Tweets by @WinrockIntl
Follow @WinrockIntl
« Previous Page 1 … 6 7 8 9 Next Page »

204 E 4th Street | North Little Rock, Arkansas 72114

ph +1 501 280 3000 | fx +1 501 280 3090

2451 Crystal Drive, Suite 700 | Arlington, Virginia 22202

ph +1 703 302 6500 | fx +1 703 302 6512

  • Contact
  • E-News Signup
  • Low Bandwidth
  • Code of Conduct
  • Winrock Privacy Statement
  • Site Map
  • Terms of Use
Copyright © 2015- Winrock International
DEV ENVIRONMENT