After 6 years at the helm of the Farmer-to-Farmer team in Senegal, our beloved Mama Toure retires today. 

Before she started with Winrock in June 2014, Mama became a member of the Africa Women Leaders in Agriculture and Environment (AWLAE) network that Winrock helped form and strengthen in the 1980s. She received her Master’s in International Agriculture Education from the University of Arizona and spent several years working for the Senegalese Ministry of Agriculture and for the Food and Agriculture Organization. Mama’s leadership and spirit has led one of our largest West Africa Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) teams and she will be very much missed! Her work with volunteers and host organizations have helped shape the program in Senegal and left a lasting impact. During her tenure, she has overseen 124 volunteer assignments that dedicated 2,330 days to F2F. These volunteer assignments resulted in 7,936 hectares under improved technology, $2,130,983 in host income, and nearly 5,000 people trained! Mama retires to her farm where she keeps fruit trees, poultry, and livestock. A genuine, warm, and dedicated leader, Mama will truly be missed! 

I learned from Mama that working as a team makes you succeed and sharing responsibility makes the job easier. I miss her already! Patrick, Ndiame Sene, F2F driver, Senegal

Mama has been a role model to staff, program beneficiaries and our volunteers. I appreciate how much she believed in her team members and invested in building their capacity. DeAnn McGrew, Director of Global Programs

Mama has been a great colleague and we are sad to see her go. I hope she works as hard at relaxing as she did during her working life! Mike Bassey, Country Director F2F Nigeria

Her warm spirit, passion for the work we do, and keen expertise in the field will be sorely missed. Jennifer Robinson, F2F Recruiter

I will especially remember Mama taking me to her pride and joy – her farm. Her retirement is well deserved but sad for me. But I shall return to Senegal at some point in the future and look forward to seeing her then. Monica Norley, F2F Volunteer

Mama was so welcoming and helpful to me during my two volunteer assignments in Senegal. The staff under her direction took better care of me than I could have ever imagined. I could not have asked for a better country director and host. She invited me to her family’s celebration of Tabaski and it was like being a member of a wonderful family. She is a true professional and has provided tremendous service to her country through her work with Winrock. Something tells me there are a lot of volunteers that can share the same sentiments about Mama. Ples Spradley, F2F Volunteer

Mama is an open and friendly person who cares about others. I will miss her morning greetings and bright smile. Abibou Diaw, our new Country Director F2F Senegal

Mama with Winrock HQ team and her fellow Country Directors from Nigeria, Guinea, Nepal, Myanmar, and Bangladesh

I’m so grateful for Mama’s spirit, leadership, and care that she has put in to building the Senegal team. After so much hard work, I hope she enjoys her retirement – it is well deserved.
Jen Snow, F2F Program Director

Continuing on with our Field Staff introductions- we are now doing a series on our excellent accountants. They make sure our finances are in order and our day to day operations move smoothly. As is true of most of our field staff, they work closely with colleagues that they have never met, including at HQ in the US, so being able to communicate across time zones, cultures and email is extremely important. It also makes any chance to meet the folks you work with a fun and interesting experience, which Justina got to do when she traveled to Nairobi to receive training on new systems and processes. 

Hi, I am Alamba, Justina Kangyang. Finance & Admin. Manager for the West Africa Farmer-to-Farmer Project- Nigeria. I have been on the F2F project for 3 years 5 months now and have 12 years’ experience in development work. It may also interest you to know that Winrock International gave me my first opportunity in development work on the Aids Impact Mitigation (AIM) project for three and a half years. I am an associate member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and with an MBA degree from the Nigerian Defense Academy, a post-graduate diploma from Obafemi Awolowo University and Higher National Diploma (HND) in Accounting from the Plateau State Polytechnic, Barkin Ladi. My Secondary education was at St. Louis College, Jos and primary education at RCM Primary School, Giring, Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria.

I am one individual who loves to laugh a lot, watch Hispanic telenovelas and playing phone games.

My work experience over the years: I am currently the Finance and Administrative Manager as stated earlier. Before joining Winrock, I worked as the Awards Coordinator with USAID funded Systems Transformed for Empowered Actions and Enabling Responses for VCs (STEER) project, as the State Finance Officer – Niger with the DFID funded State Accountability and Voice Initiative (SAVI) project, and at the Accountant Health Hub, where I managed funds under the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded Informed Decisions for Actions to Improve Maternal and Newborn Health (IDEAS) project. I developed the budget which won Health Hub the project. Before getting into the development sector I worked at Plateau State Ministry of Science and Technology as a Data Processing Officer and at Crest Hotel & Gardens as Receptionist/Cashier.

Justina, Ibrahim, and Souleyman in Nairobi

With Winrock, I have had the opportunity to experience multi-project reporting on the MARKETS, SAFE, REEP and F2F. I have gained more experience in project closeouts over the years. I love the fact the financial reporting has been revolutionized from excel to QuickBooks and electronic documentation. This new system has made work more interesting and educating. I am one who loves learning new skills and I am excited to say that I have learned to upload wire request and documents on SharePoint, using DocuSign, and how to have effective meetings on Skype. All those remote sessions with the IT team are a wonderful experience and a boost to my IT skills.  I bet my colleagues in finance were as excited as I was at the finance training in Kenya. Putting faces to names I have worked with for years has a good feeling too it. I had a swell time with Souleyman and Ibrahim (both accountants from Guinea) at the KICC, where we viewed Nairobi from the tower. Getting to meet Shawn Cathey and Mike Myers? Wow, that was the bomb and the Nairobi team, Nicodemus, Arthur, and Veronica were all really cool. It was such a nice experience having Nicodemus come over to Nigeria to coach me on QuickBooks and now I am a bundle of knowledge on the software. I look forward to learning more with the advent of the new Regional Controller.

Justina with the other Winrock Accountants Ibrahim and Souleyman

Working with the Nigeria team is homely, with Mike Bassey heading the team it’s joyous. When I lost my grandma in October last year, the support I got was amazing. I am fortunate to have a team like this one and I am glad I am part of this amazing organization. Overall my experience in Winrock is one in a million. I will not forget to mention my ladies back there at HQ, Loretta, and Sherri, are wonderful to work with. It was lovely meeting Sherri during her last visit to Nigeria and I look forward to meeting Loretta, someday in the future.

Ibrahim, Shawn, Justina and Mike in Nairobi

The fourth in our series of introductory blogs again comes from Senegal, which has the largest number of Winrock F2F staff in-country. 

My name is Youssouph Sane and I’m one of the Winrock Drivers. After I earned a Baccalaureate degree I joined the Army for two years where I got my military driving license which afterward turned it to a civil driving license.

I then worked for security companies like Phoenix and Sagam. For Sagam, I was posted as a vigil in a bank. After work, I used to volunteer as a driving school instructor for one year and a half. I was inspired when English people who came to the bank needed help and I struggled to give them information with my low-level English. So I started English classes for four hours a week. It was not enough for me but it was fine. After 4 years I got a promotion as a driver in the Sagam security company so I  stopped English classes. It was an opportunity and an experience for me to become familiar with Senegalese traffic regulations and I realized really how hard it is to drive in a big city like Dakar for more than eight hours a day or at night without stopping. One day, as I was passing by Winrock’s office I saw the Winrock sign and thought to apply for a job; so I did and was called for an interview. A couple of weeks later I got the job.

My favorite pastimes are exercising; watching soccer and movies on tv; being with my lovely daughters and conversing with people.

Working for an American company was my dream because of their hardworking attitude, seriousness, and pay. It is also an opportunity to improve my English.

I have learned a lot from F2F volunteers about pruning, making compost, and constructing drip irrigation from local material but I haven’t applied any of the volunteers’ technique so far because I have yet to have the opportunity. Volunteers helped me a lot because being with them pushes me to practice English and now I know many things about American culture.

Pick up/drop off, assisting for the volunteers and supporting the staff are the most interesting parts of my job.

Once there was a volunteer who didn’t find her luggage when she arrived at Dakar’s airport. So we canceled the trip for the next day; therefore, she stayed in Dakar longer than planned. In order to catch up and not change her training agenda, we had to make the return trip in one day, therefore, we traveled the whole day from Kolda to Dakar (a 7-10 hour car ride) and it was very tough journey because of the distance.

Senegal Team

Our third intro blog from the field this week comes from Senegal, a country which speaks over 36 different languages! 

My name is Ndiame Sene (Patrick) I am from a village named Nianing, located south of Dakar. I grew up there until I got my Baccalaureate from our village high school called Lycee Demba Diop.

I came to the University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar in 2006 and spent two years studying in the English Department. I obtained my driver’s license the year I gave up studies; soon after I got a job with the  Security Guard Agency of Phoenix, Senegal as a delivery man with a motorcycle.

After 4 years, since a had a driver’s license, I thought that with my English knowledge I could get a better job with an American NGO, so I posted an application on a job opportunities website, one week later I was called by Winrock assistant for an interview and that’s when I joined Winrock’s F2f Program.

My hobbies are running and fitness I also love very much to watch soccer games on TV, on weekends to be with my family in my village where I go fishing or swimming at the beach.

With the Winrock F2F Program, I really improved my English by being with volunteers because we spend a lot of time with them in many places and I get to practice a lot. I have also learned a lot from volunteers on topics like website design, fish farming, poultry, fruit and vegetable processing, and horticulture.

I use these skills to help myself and my fellow villagers, for example, I created a website and school presentation document for my village Primary school and that contributed to having many visitors interested in helping the school (my village is in a tourism area; the donations led to getting 2 more classrooms built and the school fenced)

The most interesting part of the work for me is when I pick up a volunteer from the airport, it is the first contact and I am the person to take care of them from the airport to hotel and to the office the day after. I am the person to show them the office and introduce them to all of the Winrock staff, it is a pleasure for me.

I have had very funny moments with volunteers when we visit the monuments, Goree island, or Pink Lake (Lake Retba), like in this photo with my friend Ples Spradley; this was taken after a visit to the [African Renaissance] monument, I had accompanied him to buy art at the market.

We are a few months into the newest cycle of Farmer-to-Farmer, a program that along with our skilled volunteers, could not be accomplished without the hard work of those in the field. Over the next few months, we will introduce you to some of the amazing people that help make the volunteer’s assignment run so smoothly. The below is translated from French. 

My name is Mamadou Bailo Diallo, I am a Winrock – International, F2F-Guinea, driver. I was born in 1981 in the Mali prefecture, in the Republic of Guinea, Conakry, I’m married and the father of two (2) children, one of which is a daughter.

Among the key tasks I perform are:

• Maintenance of the vehicle so it always in good condition;
• Plan the maintenance and/or periodic repairs;
• Ensure the project staff transportation;
• Update the logbook and drive  professionally;
• Take pictures on assignments
• Perform any other tasks assigned to me.

I have driven for Winrock since December 15, 2015. Before that, I drove for the African Training Center for Development.

Following studies at the National School of Breeding of TOLO – Mamou between 2004-2006, I got a diploma for a technical officer for livestock. I then graduated with a degree of a technician (BTS) at the National School of Agriculture and Breeding of Koba/Boffa in 2013.

My Hobbies include reading, traveling, watching TV, walking, going to movies and playing sports.

The reasons that have motivated me to apply and work with F2F of Winrock in Guinea are many and varied:

• The importance of this program is crucial in the development of our communities through farmers (associations, groups, unions, and federations) and particularly that of the development of our agricultural including the educational institutions that I graduated from; My work with this program funded by USAID, and accomplished through technical assistance from American volunteers has allowed me to gain enormous experience at all levels and makes me very useful to the rest of the members of the communities in which I live. I stay grateful to the American taxpayer for its help to the development of my country;
• My regular contact with volunteers has allowed me to improve how I express myself in English, and by maintaining exchanges with the volunteers on many topics, also get familiar with American culture;
• Within the team Farmer-to-Farmer Winrock-Guinea, we cultivate team spirit and the respect for the principles and values that everyone maintains

The most interesting moments for me doing this work:  When I get to share information with the Country Director on the ongoing operation of the program and when he asks everyone to give their opinion on the progress of implemented activities and to propose planning items for future programs.

A few special times I have had with volunteers include, among many, the field visits and tourist attractions. I once talked to Drs. McKim and Sorensen, who worked on institutional assessment and plan for Center for Post Primary Professional Training of Macenta while we were walking through Ziama’s forest looking for elephants.

I have gained much experience in being able to participate in several trainings. For example:

• On Gender and Equity with Madame Annais, which had a follow-up conference at the Institute of Veterinary Medicine of Dalaba.
• On Phytosanitary products and their use with Dr. Damisi in Kankan
• And most recently, on my training with U.GAS with Dr. Diop about associated crops cultures and composting techniques.