I’ve worked in Winrock’s Volunteer Programs since March 2014. I have many responsibilities, but the most important one is the recruitment of volunteer experts for the USAID funded Farmer-to-Farmer program and an associate award called the Agriculture Education and Market Improvement Program (AEMIP). AEMIP operates in Guinea and its goal is to strengthen agriculture education and training through organizational capacity building of the country’s only four-year agriculture university, the Institut Supérieur Agronomic et Vétérinaire de Faranah (ISAV/F).
When I applied for the position of Program Associate/Volunteer Recruiter at Winrock, I had to google Guinea. I’d heard the country name, but that was the extent of my knowledge and the only thing I knew about agriculture was that Arkansas grows a lot of rice and soybeans. At this point, you may be wondering how on earth I ended up on an assignment in West Africa if I hadn’t come from a background in international development and knew nearly nothing about agriculture. (more…)