Winrock International invited me to volunteer in Bangladesh as part of the Farmer-to-Farmer Program funded by USAID.  In Bangladesh, the Farmer-to-Farmer program engages skilled American volunteers to provide training and technical assistance to support youth entrepreneurship in the agriculture sector and to strengthen agricultural education and training institutions.  My assignment was to visit local beef cattle fattening farms and locally available feed sources to assess the existing status, practices, problems, and opportunities to improve practices of beef fattening activities in the community, and to conduct two 3-day trainings on improved beef fattening for the host staff and youth group members with a focus on youth entrepreneurship development.  The Rural Reconstruction Foundation (RRF) hosted me, as part of its mission to seek and accomplish “the comprehensive development of underprivileged men, women, youths, and children towards understanding a civil society with respect of full democracy, liberty, equality, justice, peace, and solidarity”.

This was my first Winrock volunteer experience, my first visit to Bangladesh and my first visit to Asia. I enjoyed Bangladesh since the day of my arrival in Dhaka City.  During my assignment, I visited farms, worked with farmers, and participated in the two three-day training for the youth beef fattening group members.  I value and admire the great interest shown by all participants to enhance their beef fattening knowledge and make of it a mechanism to improve their lifestyles. All farmers that we visited were very attentive to our recommendations on how to improve their production system. They wrote the recommendations on animal management, feeding practices, and animal comfort.

Visiting local beef farmers at Jessore District, Bangladesh

The RRF technical staff and the beef farmers showed a great attitude during the 3-day training sections. All participated actively during the training, asking many questions. The RRF staff showed critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, especially during the ration formulation exercises where we used local feed resources to formulate beef cattle diets.

Training RRF technical staff in beef cattle diet formulation using local resources

RRF Beneficiaries – Beef Fattening for Youth Entrepreneurship Development

Professionally, I will share this experience with my colleagues from the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Puerto Rico and encourage them to volunteer in this type of activities.  I will also share this experience in the classes that I teach to undergraduate and graduate students of at the University of Puerto Rico. It is very important for the student population to know about how volunteering aboard can improve the livelihoods for so many youths around the world.

In closing, I really appreciate the new relationships I have acquired with people from the RRF and Winrock International. My special and personal gratitude goes to Mr. Badal Golder, Project Manager Specialist, Winrock International, and Mrs. Shahnaz Begum, Assistant Director, RRF, for their friendship and professional support during the activities. This experience, working with Winrock International in Bangladesh, has enriched my life and I feel it has empowered my career.  After 22 years of teaching Animal Sciences, I believe that a higher education degree is not complete without the experience to be a volunteer and have the ability to help and transfer to people the knowledge that we have had the opportunity to acquire during our life.

Volunteer Jeremy Elliot-Engel recently completed a youth entrepreneurship assignment with Winrock’s F2F program in Nepal. His blog post, below, offers candid insights from his trip:

Entrepreneurship is not only something you learn, but something you must do.

Namaste from Nepal.  If Nepal is one thing, it is a country of smiles, optimism and positivity.

This was my first time volunteering with the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) project.  It has been an incredible privilege to work with the Nepal country team and the students in Chitwan district.  This was not my first time traveling abroad providing education or training.  What I have valued throughout this experience has been that it has been asset based and has supported the strengths of the local individuals and hosts.

My project was training university agriculture majors on entrepreneurship.  The hosts were the Eco Minions and Prikiti Prahawa, both different organizations that have organized around agricultural and environmental concerns.  After talking with the youth leadership, I quickly, was able to identify the training needs to the fundamentals of business. I am confident these exceptional students (all 108 of them) will be able to recreate this training and spread the material, throughout the University but also into the community.

As agriculture majors at the local public agriculture university, they had content knowledge, but needed help to identify business concepts and how to create business plans.  We also spent significant time on writing and practicing SMART goals, so that the training would be valuable to their personal lives as well as in business.

During the intensive 20 hour training, students often had their first taste of experiential learning, following the 4-H motto “learning by doing.”  On numerous occasions on the first day or two, I heard “when will we start learning” or “we have so much to cover, let’s do less activities and more learning.”  By the end of the training, the students were saying “That was the best training I have had, it was so much fun and I have learned so much.”  The learning had crept up on them, while they were busy making marketing portfolios or playing Telephone to experience what marketing message diffusion appears like. Because the content was interactive and student driven, it was able to be relevant to the challenges and issues that occur locally.

Most of these students still have years of University studying to complete before they are able to go into the world and start a new entrepreneurship business. However, I am confident that their exposure to entrepreneurial thinking, understanding the importance of goals, maintaining personal, organization and business financial records and the many other concepts we covered will be utilized as they continue through their schooling.

I was energized by the can-do attitude and desire for improvement by every one of my learners during the training. There was a practical recognition of the challenges ahead and a willingness to tackle it.  I made the students promise me that if they made it BIG, then I expected an invitation back to Nepal.  They all promised, and one day, I am sure I will be returning to Nepal.  Dhanyabad (Thank You).

Here are some photos of Jeremy in action: