This article is a contribution to a four-week blog series celebrating 30 years of USAID’s John Ogonowski and Doug Bereuter Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Program.

Another central theme of the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer Program is citizen diplomacy.

The Center for Citizen Diplomacy states that “citizen diplomacy is the concept that every global citizen has the right, even the responsibility, to engage across cultures and create shared understanding through meaningful person-to-person interactions.” Time and time again, Farmer-to-Farmer makes this happen.

One of our favorite examples of citizen diplomacy, and a true model of compassion and service, is Dr. Kirk Astroth.

Kirk trained representatives from 18 youth-serving organizations in Nepal, including the National Youth Federation of Nepal (NYFN), on methods to engage youth and teach leadership, communication, and advocacy skills. A year later, he is still in touch with his trainees. Kirk’s service went above and beyond the timeframe of his two-weeks in country; the assignment was just the first ripple.

After Kirk’s assignment, participants were eager to start new youth development activities. Given their keen interest and commitment, he assisted NYFN to obtain three scholarships to participate in The First Global 4H Summit 2014 in South Korea. After attending the summit and returning inspired, NYFN immediately began the process of registering a 4-H club. In January 2015, they received government approval and established 4-H Nepal, the first in the country.

Mr. Lok Raj Awasthi, General Secretary of NYFN, was one of the participants that attended Kirk’s training and the summit in Korea. He now serves as Chair of Nepal 4-H. After reaching out to Kirk for continued advice and to update him on progress, Lok was invited to come to the US – sponsored by Kirk and the University of Arizona — for three weeks. During his time in the US, he participated in youth development training and 4-H exchanges with American and international 4-H leaders, and visited farms in Arizona. Lok explains, “I learned many things and gained many skills. This is most important for Nepal!”

During his trip to the US, Lok also had the opportunity to teach about Nepal. In addition to sharing his experiences with 4-H leaders from 35 U.S. states, he gave presentations to faculty from the University of Arizona’s College of Agriculture and at an Arizona high school. It was a unique and fortunate opportunity for Lok as well as for the numerous individuals that he met.

Soon after Lok returned to Nepal, the massive earthquake hit the country. Putting what they learned from Kirk into practice, Lok and the members of the newly registered 4-H Nepal club mobilized nearly 600 youth volunteers to help with rebuilding and relief efforts in 12 affected districts. Just as Kirk had modeled for them, these leaders and the youth volunteers are now modeling compassion and service in their home country.

Who knew that a ripple could be stronger than an earthquake?

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From November 16-December 11, F2F program partners are sharing their knowledge and experience providing technical assistance to farmers, farm groups, agribusinesses, service providers, and other agriculture sector institutions in developing and transitional countries. As aligned with Feed the Future, the U.S. Government’s global hunger and food security initiative, F2F works to support inclusive agriculture sector growth, facilitate private sector engagement in the agriculture sector, enhance development of local capacity and promote climate-smart development. Volunteer assignments address host-led priorities to expand economic growth that increases incomes and improves access to nutritious food. This blog series aims to capture and share this program experience.

Read more articles celebrating 30 years of F2F on Agrilinks 

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:   

For this month’s Volunteer of the Month, we honor Kirk Astroth (above center), Assistant Dean and Director of Arizona 4-H Development at the University of Arizona.

A couple of us first met Kirk in January 2014. We were instantly struck by his warmth and passion for youth development. After spending just an hour with Kirk, we knew he would be an excellent volunteer. We were right.

Seven months later, Kirk went on his first Winrock volunteer assignment, under our USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer program in Nepal. He made a deep impression on his trainees, who were representatives from the National Youth Federation of Nepal (NYFN) and other youth-serving organizations. (more…)

Winrock International has a long history of contributing to Nepal’s development and has been working to increase economic opportunity and sustain resources while protecting the environment of Nepal for over 30 years. Across three decades, Winrock in Nepal has periodically shifted program focus to address the current needs of the country, designing specific thematic programs and developing a coherent institutional strategy, vision and mission. Keeping to Winrock International’s global mission is essential: “Winrock International is a nonprofit organization that works with people in the United States and around the world to empower the disadvantaged, increase economic opportunity, and sustain natural resources.” (more…)

This week marked International Youth Day. Many Winrock Farmer-to-Farmer volunteers work with youth to build skills and confidence to enable youth to improve their livelihoods. What work could be more important?

Volunteer Bonnie Loghry shares her thoughts after working with a youth association in Mali:

“Coming to Mali has touched me greatly on a personal level; the people of Mali are gracious, kind and have such a wonderful sense of humor! This assignment has provided me with a deeper appreciation of how much people can accomplish when they come together, united in a single purpose, as has the Youth Association of Bla [my host organization]. The members of this association came to each training with open minds and hearts ready to absorb new knowledge; I will use these good people as examples for all future students with whom I have contact in the United States.”