Growing Knowledge & Building Partnerships

By Andrés Varona, Agriculture & Food Security Program Officer at Partners of the Americas  For two weeks in September 2017, Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) volunteer Bettina Barrillas traveled to Managua to assist our host, Fabretto Foundation. During her assignment, Ms. Barrillas worked alongside Fabretto’s e-commerce team in order to develop a creative, strategic and innovative branding plan for its agricultural value added products (e.g. Honey, Chia, Coffee, Fruits). As part of these efforts, she provided hands-on knowledge transfers about design strategies and accessible software that can be used to develop and improve packaging/labeling for existing products. The volunteer also supported the host in generating marketing campaigns tailored to the local and domestic market for natural food products. This F2F assistance came at a strategic time for Fabretto, especially since they are currently seeking to leverage their connections in the United States to sell their farmers’ ag...

By Andrés Varona, Agriculture & Food Security Program Officer at Partners of the Americas  F2F Volunteer  Femke Olham  led a series of technical workshops with Raizal  communities in Providencia Island. These trainings were centered on ways to safely capture rainwater and channel it to local orchards. In the last six years, Partners of the Americas (Partners) has been supporting agriculture, food security, and natural resource management in Colombia through the USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Program.   Since 2011, Partners has assisted over 1,500 people and formally trained 1,131 individuals (681 men and 450 women) in a variety of technical assistance areas such as entrepreneurship, small business development and administration, international marketing, tropical post-harvest processing, livestock management, citrus nursery management, climate change, and soil and water conservation in Colombia. F2F Nicholas DiLorenzo (right) visi...

Team Presentations at the CEPROCAL Center in Nebaj The first concrete evidence of soap-like substance is dated around 2800 BC., the first soap  makers were Babylonians, Mesopotamians, Egyptians, as well as the ancient Greeks and Romans. While volunteer Robert Spencer does not have that many years of experience he does have sixteen years of experience in making cold-process goat milk soap, shampoo, and lotion.  And has done multiple trainings in Myanmar, Haiti, and Guatemala.  The overall goal of this project was to provide economic opportunities for women in small-scale production of value-added agriculture products (oils, animal byproducts, herbs, vegetables, and fruits), along with goat milk in making skin care products including soap, shampoo, and lotion in rural areas of Guatemala.  This project host was CEPROCAL who collaborated with Save the Children Foundation, and the first week of training was conducted in Nebaj (El Quiche Department) at ...

Altair Rodriguez’s demonstration farm in La Vega Province, Dominican Republic In August 2017, Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) volunteer Tom Gaman traveled to the Dominican Republic to support the agroforestry efforts of Altair Rodriguez’s demonstration farm. L ocated in La Vega Province, Finca Tierra Negra is a 66 hectare farm that is made up by partially-shaded  cacao trees grown primarily under a broken canopy of nitrogen-fixing native (e.g.Erythrina) and non-native trees (e.g. African Tulip). Much of farm sits on land that was previously used to produce conventional plantain ( Musa paradisiaca ) and cassava ( Manihot esculenta ).  The land is also susceptible to excess concentrations of pesticides and inorganic fertilizer runoff emanating from nearby farms. There are also a series of non-organic crops in the farm that have been neglected for years, and are hampering the ability of the Rodriguez family from obtaining organic production. Altair and her family ar...

By Andrés Varona, Program Officer - A griculture & Food Security Through the manufacturing of educational kits, DIDART is a small Guatemalan enterprise that teaches children about the cultural heritage of the country. In order to spur community development, DIDARD purchases the materials that go into their kits directly from rural artisans from across Guatemala. Since 2015, Partner of the Americas’ Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) program has been sending volunteers in order to assist the company with various organizational, financial, and sales aspects of their enterprise. In the latest F2F assignment, Kate Senn traveled to Guatemala City in order to support DIDART with a series of digital branding and online marketing efforts. In preparation for her F2F assignment, Kate  reviewed DIDART’s websites and social media platforms as well as identified areas that could help her draft a “Social Media Strategy Handbook” for the small company. Upon her arrival in Guatemala on August...

One of the newest hosts that Partners’ Farmer-to-Farmer program has been working with is FADCANIC ( Fundación para la Autonomía y el Desarrollo de la Costa Atlántica de Nicaragua ). FADCANIC is a civil society organization based in the two autonomous regions of Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast (e.g. RAAS and RAAN). Partners of the Americas began working with FADCANIC in mid-2016. Since then, the relationship has already proven fruitful. FADCANIC was founded in 1990 after a government statute recognized the autonomy of the Atlantic coastal regions of Nicaragua. FADCANIC’s mission is to support the autonomy of these areas by improving the livelihoods of its inhabitants. FADCANIC achieve these through two different educational centers: 1) the Center for Agroforestry (Centro Agroforestal or “CAF”) and 2) the Center for Environmental and Agroforestry Education (Centro Educación Técnica Ambiental y Agroforestal or “CEAA”. Through these centers, FADCANIC offers free three-year technical prog...

During the last four years of the USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) program, Partners of the Americas has been actively working to strengthen the production and organizational capacity of numerous women and youth-based groups in Nicaragua. As with other country-specific F2F projects, the “Women&Youth” project in Nicaragua relies on the mutual collaboration of a myriad of local agricultural cooperatives, foundations, as well as educational institutions. Among these various entities, Partners will like to take the opportunity to recognize the work of our local host, Fabretto Foundation. With their HQ in Managua and field offices throughout the country, Fabretto’s mission is to ensure that children, families and communities in the most disadvantaged areas of Nicaragua, reach their full potential and improve their future opportunities through educational and nutritional programs. Currently, Fabretto implements an innovative high school program called SAT (Tutorial Learning System...