Community-Based Agribusiness in DR

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The community of La Rosa in the Dominican Republic suffered from electric and water shortages, and a lack of investment in their farmers and community members. Despite their hardships, a group of active, engaged community leaders wanted to create successful community-based cooperative businesses.

Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Volunteer Brian Foster came to help the La Rosa community make their plans a reality. He developed and presented a series of business planning workshops in the community to explain agribusiness concepts and the business planning process.

The workshops were organized and facilitated by staff from F2F and the Dominican NGO “Servicio Para La Paz” (Service for Peace). Currently, Servicio Para La Paz is undertaking a water supply project in several communities that plans to eventually supply potable water directly to households.
Four workshops were conducted based on the organization of community-based businesses in: 1) cacao production and chocolate products; 2) agroforestry nursery; 3) compost production; and 4) aquaculture (pond-raised Tilapia). Each consisted of a morning session focused on the collection of cost/revenue data and the financial analysis of the business, and an afternoon session dedicated to an interactive exercise to develop a business plan.

While the community members appeared to not have a lot of prior knowledge about business planning, they had a strong willingness to learn and enthusiastically participated during the workshops.

Foster recommended that Servicio Para La Paz and F2F staff provide follow-up workshops to present the final business plans and financial analyses to the community leaders and workshop participants.
He looks forward to staying in contact with the people of La Rosa and wishes them all the best as they plan and hopefully move toward organizing their own community businesses.

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