Growing Knowledge & Building Partnerships

One of Philippe's rabbits During her most recent F2F assignment to Haiti, volunteer Myriam Kaplan-Pasternak provided follow-up assistance to rabbit farmers on the family-production and commercial scales. Activities were centered on promoting this industry as a viable income-generator and on educating more university agronomy students in activities related to rabbit production, such as vet care, processing, feed block production, and general management. “Twelve students and two instructors from the MARNDR (Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Rural Development) arrived on a field trip to Lory and Quartier Morin. They visited Philippe’s rabbitry in Quartier Morin and then came to Lory for several PowerPoint talks on rabbits. We also did hands-on wet lab dissection of 5 rabbits. The next morning we made a sample batch of rabbit feed blocks. This technology is a segue into commercially available, locally made, animal feeds for farm animals. We also ate rabbits from ...

Rural landscape in the Dominican Republic Happy Earth Day from the Farmer-to-Farmer team!  Here at Partners, we are committed to promoting economic growth in an environmentally sustainable way. Agriculture and natural resource management are inextricably linked to the health of our planet and many Farmer-to-Farmer assignments have an environmental component. Some include trainings in natural resource and forest management or biochar production while others focus on organic farming methods or integrated pest management. You'll find a few examples below but please a look around the rest of our blog to read stories about Partners’ work in agriculture and the environment! With help from Partners’ F2F program, the Jarabacoa School in the Dominican Republic was able to grow from teaching forestry alone to also training students in the more general themes of natural resources and environmental management. The focus on curriculum development brought volunteers with a university ...

Ellen Lewis meets with female association members in the DR to discuss OD needs (2009). Ellen Lewis has served as an organization development (OD) F2F volunteer on three different occasions. For her first two assignments in 2009 and 2011, she met with several micro- and small-enterprises in the Dominican Republic to assess their individual, group, and organizational needs and develop appropriate support and interventions. In 2013, she conducted workshops on leadership, organizational systems and processes, and change management in Honduras and Guyana . During her time as an F2F volunteer, Ellen became interested in the role that gender plays in organizational development. Since then, she has decided to study the role of women in improving the sustainability and impact of the F2F program for her PhD dissertation. Ellen is currently completing her fourth F2F assignment in Nicaragua where she is conducting OD trainings with the F2F staff and dairy cooperatives to help them achieve th...

Local women in a greenhouse in the Dominican Republic. Throughout Latin America, agriculture plays an important role in the lives of many. In recent years, the role of gender in agriculture has gained greater attention, particularly the important and substantial role that women play. Globally, women comprise approximately 43% percent of the agricultural labor work force in developing countries. USAID’s Feed the Future Initiative specifically focuses on closing the gender gap and addressing the constraints that women face in accessing land, water, agricultural resources, and labor markets. According to USAID, if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase their farm yields by 20-30%, in turn reducing the number of hungry people by up to 150 million people worldwide (Feed the Future 2012). A women's group in Nicaragua prepares produce to be dried in solar dehydrators and sold in local markets. Partners’ Farmer-to-Farmer program focuses on e...

Last month, F2F volunteers Tom Evans and Wally Pill traveled to Jamaica to assist the Santoy Farmers Cooperative in establishing a hydroponic system for their microgreen production. The following includes excerpts from Dr. Evans’ and Dr. Pill’s joint trip report: Constructing the hydroponic system.  “This cooperative, under the leadership of Mr. Milton Murdock, has expanded their production of microgreen vegetables over the last several years. More and more resorts and restaurants are being served by the Cooperative. […] One of the major costs in microgreen production is the cost of the substrate in which the microgreens are grown. Since there are no locally produced substrates that the cooperative could use, peat-based substances from overseas must be imported. Such substrates are very expensive. One way to reduce the cost of microgreen production is therefore to eliminate the need for peat-based substrates and produce the microgreens hydroponically. Hydroponics has m...

The following blog post comes from Katyana André, Haitian-American businesswoman and first-time Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer, who writes about her past two weeks in Haiti: Haiti: An experience that is overwhelming, while also being deeply profound. Moreover, it is an opportunity to connect with an incredible group of people. And, in my case, it was an occasion to reconnect to my roots on a deeper level. What has captured me so far is that the people of Haiti possess a great sense of courage and tenacity for life that I have not seen anywhere else. A part of a culture, already my own, which I unfortunately had forgotten even existed. Farmer-to-Farmer made it possible for me to find it again. Katyana conducting a business training for coffee producers Elaborating on how I operate my own small business (Madame Sara) and being a Haitian-American woman who also speaks Creole, has allowed me to better relate to farmers and helped me to make them feel more comfortable with me. Coff...