Supporting Cocoa and Tilapia Farmers in the Dominican Republic

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Brian Foster was the second volunteer to go to the Dominican Republic in this cycle of the Farmer-to-Farmer program. He supported Service for Peace (Servicio Para la Paz or SFP), an NGO that works to break the cycle of poverty by engaging communities to identify and address their own development priorities. As part of their strategy, they invite international volunteers to support the communities in their efforts to improve their quality of life. 

SFP works in rural areas of the Dominican Republic. The past two years they’ve been focusing their efforts in the mountains of Villa Altagracia county within the province of San Cristobal, just 45 minutes northwest of Santo Domingo. SFP embraces the idea of community-driven development, in which people and their institutions are treated as assets and partners in the search for sustainable solutions to development challenges. This approach emphasizes local empowerment and capacity-building. 

Brian Foster, a charismatic and experienced agribusinessman, flew to the Dominican Republic in August 2019 to support cacao producers, women, and fish farmers from the community of La Rosa who wanted to learn how to organize their businesses and set prices. The final goal of the cacao farmers was to create a cooperative and a cacao nursery managed by local women. The tilapia growers, on the other hand, had the need of verifying if their production was profitable. 


Brian completed four workshops and taught these local farmers to design business plans and create cash flows from scratch. He addressed cacao production and processing, compost processing in large scale, tilapia farming and the creation of a cacao communitarian nursery. 

Referring to his assignment Brian said: “I thoroughly enjoyed this Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer assignment with Partners of the Americas. I would like to thank the community members and workshop participants in La Rosa for their time, attention, and engagement; I am hopeful that they enjoyed and learned about the organization and management of small-scale, community-based businesses as well as the business planning process. I wish them all the best as they think about, plan, and move toward the organization of their own community businesses.”

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