Defining the Youth in Agriculture Development (YAD) Country Strategy in the Dominican Republic

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Our first volunteer for the 2019-2023 F2F cycle was Melanie Forstrom! Melanie traveled to the Dominican Republic in February of 2019 to support our field office staff in defining the Youth in Agriculture Development (YAD) country project strategy that will be implemented during the cycle.

Melanie has 14 years of experience in youth education and experiential learning, including work with homeless undocumented youth and alternative high school youth. She has led 4-H programs since 2011, including a public speaking training and evaluation program, and science and tech mentoring programs serving youth under-represented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. She has served as a F2F volunteer on several occasions in the past.

During the two weeks of her assignment, she gave two presentations to young farmers and met with different hosts like BANELINO, Plan Yaque, and Fundación REDDOM. Melanie gathered data through stakeholder interviews, focus groups, and desk research, and analyzed and synthesized this information, working with the field staff to write the YDA country project strategy. Melanie also produced a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis of each organization as well as overall of the youth sector.


She concluded that a smaller scale mentoring program with each producer teaching one or two youth is the more viable path for the five-year cycle. At the end of the assignment, Melanie expected the coordinated strategy to result in more young producers, less urban flight, and improved salaries and product prices for young producers due to improved products.

Melanie commented of her assignment: “Being the first volunteer of a cycle gave me the exciting opportunity to contribute to and shape the youth involvement strategy for the following five years in the Dominican Republic. I was mainly stationed in Santo Domingo but had the opportunity to travel to Jarabacoa and Mao. There I saw and experienced organic strawberry and banana production, talked to young producers, and had rich conversations about protecting the basins of the Rio Yaque del Norte.” 

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