News

Knowledge is Earning Power for Campesinos in Colombia

Laura Alexander, Senior Program Manager and Director of the Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Special Program Support Project at the Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA), recently visited the F2F program in the Orinoquía region of Colombia. The purpose of her visit was to provide guidance and oversight as this successful program is winding down. While there, she had an opportunity to get to know some of the farmers who have been honing their agricultural skills by working with the F2F volunteers sent by Purdue University in Indiana to Universidad de los Llanos in Villavicencio. This is what she learned from Eloisa Aguirre in the shade of young trees on Eloisa’s farm.

Woman Expands Poultry Farming Business with Guidance from Farmer-to-Farmer Volunteer

| ACDI/VOCA

Victorine Bujakera is a farmer and member of a cooperative called the Coopérative des Fermiers de Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She is a nurse by training, but for the last 10 years has raised poultry at home with her husband. She began poultry farming with layer chickens (chickens raised to produce eggs), despite having no prior training in poultry husbandry.

With IESC Volunteers and VEGA Support, EU Ban on Some Ghanaian Agricultural Exports Lifted

| IESC

In early November the European Union (EU) announced that it will lift a ban on five agricultural products from Ghana beginning in 2018, a decision that will help Ghanaian farmers and the economy more broadly. Seeing the ban lifted was one of the primary objectives of the Improving Food Safety Systems Project, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

For Madisi Cooperative, F2F Volunteer Made All the Difference in Certification

| CNFA

Madisi Agro-Processors Cooperative Society (MAPCOOP) Limited is a community business organization in Malawi, with 729 members (359 women). The cooperative, formally registered on June 4th 2013, promotes crop diversification – particularly targeting former tobacco farmers – into peanuts, soy beans, sunflowers, Jatropha curcas nuts, hibiscus, and maize.

International Volunteer Day Celebration 2017

On December 5—International Volunteer Day—on Capitol Hill a broad spectrum of skilled volunteers, bipartisan congressional champions, USAID leadership, volunteer-sending organizations and experts from the private sector gathered to celebrate the contributions of volunteers to effective U.S. global development and discuss a new USAID initiative to leverage pro-bono private sector expertise to reduce poverty and promote prosperity worldwide.