Sydney-Johanna Stevns

Country: Chile
Organization: La Fundación para la Innovación Agraría (FIA) Santiago, Chile

SYDNEY-JOHANNA: "I worked with an organization called La Fundación para la Innovación Agraría (FIA) (or in English, the Foundation for the Innovation of Agriculture) in Santiago, Chile. The mission of FIA is to support a culture of innovation in agriculture that improves the competitiveness of sustainable and inclusive farming. They do this by conducting research on new technologies, providing trainings, and providing funding and assistance to programs that are locally run. Ensuring that farmers in Chile can successfully adapt to climate change is key to ensuring their continued livelihoods and economic growth potential. The project I worked on was helping FIA understand how their adaptation strategies could be improved, specifically by examining how they compared to American and international standards.

I worked closely with staff to understand the projects and visited several farms throughout Chile to better understand how the technologies they promoted functioned and how their programs were operating. My final deliverable was the recommendation that they should improve their programming on the management of natural resources and sustainable development (specifically for infrastructure). This recommendation has formed the basis for a grant application they are submitting to the World Bank to further expand their programs and research efforts in these areas.

When I began my internship I was at a very minimal level of Spanish. After working and living in Chile for two months my Spanish improved significantly, however, my vocabulary now mostly consists of very technical terms about agriculture and development. Because of the initial language barrier it took a while to understand the structure of the organization. My understanding is that FIA does very little of their own program implementation. Instead, they focus on local community empowerment. They recruit and identify small- to medium-sized projects throughout the country that align with their mission and then support them with information, connections, or finances. This is an interesting model because although they have the resources to leverage significant control over projects, they do relatively little of this.

My impression is that this way of supporting projects means that local communities are much more invested in the outcome. Not only does it require less operational work on FIA's end, but it simultaneously helps them achieve one of their goals to spread awareness and knowledge on these issues and tools. I also imagine that this model is much more effective, because if projects are self-initiated by local groups or individuals then they are able to more accurately address their local area's needs as opposed to a large national organization coming in to potentially address an insignificant problem. I find this model very fascinating, both because it makes a lot of sense and because it makes me wonder why this isn't the standard in development initiatives across the world."

Dristy Shrestha

Country: Tanzania
Organization: BRAC Tanzania

DRISTY: "BRAC is the world’s largest non-governmental development organization measured by the number of employees and the number of people it has helped. It is dedicated to empowering people and communities living in poverty, illiteracy, disease and social injustice through its various programs in areas ranging from microfinance, agriculture and food security, education and more. It currently operates in 11 countries across the globe.

BRAC started its work in Tanzania in 2006 with microfinance and livelihood development programs. In just less than a decade with multiple programs in various sectors ranging from agriculture and food security, education, empowerment and livelihood for adolescents, microfinance and small enterprise program, BRAC has become one of the largest financial institutions in the country.

In June-August 2016, under the supervision of the Program Manager of Microfinance Program, I had the opportunity to work as the Summer Research Intern at BRAC Tanzania. In this role, the main task I was entrusted with was to i) assess the services offered by BRAC Tanzania tailored towards smallholder farmers in the country, and ii) make recommendations to the Country Office based in Dar es Salaam on how to better address the needs and challenges of smallholder farmers in Tanzania."

"Personally, I had an incredibly rewarding summer filled with new challenges, new experiences, and learnings. BRAC is an organization that development practitioners such as myself study a lot about, both inside and outside class. Therefore, the opportunity to experience its activities and inner workings first hand and be a part of its team was a special treat for me. In addition, it was refreshing to explore Tanzania and go beyond my comfort zone into a country, region and continent that I had never been to."

Angga Martha

Country: Indonesia
Organization: Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives (CISDI)

ANGGA: The Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives (CISDI) is an institution that serves as the center for national development strategy analysis in Indonesia. It involves creating innovations and strategic initiatives that will help accelerate the implementation and achievement of the 2030 Global Goals on Sustainable Development (SDGs) as a whole and specifically the implementation of development interventions in the area of health and youth engagement. As part of CISDI’s mandate, they facilitate and drive cross-sector collaboration between public, private and civil society organizations integral to achieve development goals that are widespread, equal, and sustainable.

My role for this internship includes the following aspects:

1. To assist CISDI in facilitating multi-stakeholder partnerships on SDGs, specifically non- state actors, such as youth groups, the private sector, and philanthropy organizations in the SDGs implementation.

2. To assist strategy development on SDG implementation into the local development plan with a concentration on public-private partnership and youth engagement

I got an opportunity to visit and work together with a team of Pencerah Nusantara in Pototano, West Nusa Tenggara and to see their direct contribution to the local community in this area. It is evident to me that youth participation is a pre-condition for sustainable development and the youth need to be co-owners of the future. Inclusive participation will not see youth as an object or target, but more in developing a mutual partnership with young people as a subject and partner to development.

Private sector and philanthropy organization has crucial role in shaping development, especially in this rapidly evolving global environment where information is open and free for everyone.

SDGs can act as guiding principles for the work of private sector philanthropy organization, and provide a platform for the private sector to implement long-term goals and partnerships that will make a significant contribution towards achieving sustainable development for all.

Sai Kumaraswami

Organization: iSTAR Skill Development
Country: India

SAI: India is the world’s youngest and second most populous country. 62% of its 1.25 billion are in the working age group of 15-59 years and it adds 10 million people to its work force every year (4 million of these are graduates). However, less than 2% receive any form of skills training in their respective occupations. Comparative figures in other economies are – 96% (South Korea), 80% (Japan), 75% (Germany), 68% (UK) and 40% (China). Academia in India has been traditionally characterised by an anaesthetic learning experiences for the students – an assessment centric approach to teaching that ignores practical application, outdated concepts, rote learning, poor college infrastructure, underpaid and underqualified teachers. As the world looks to India to take its seat at the engine of growth, policymakers in the country are faced with the onerous task of facilitating this demographic dividend. There is a need to focus and reorient India’s education system to make it more skills based and aligned with the needs of the industry.

iSTAR SKILL DEVELOPMENT

iSTAR is an education technology firm that addresses the skilling needs of people and addresses the problem through a public –private partnership. It provides end to end services in higher education management including content and program development, curriculum design, delivery, assessment, recruitment and consulting services. Its mission is to create sustainable livelihoods through intensive skills training across multiple sectors including banking and financial services, retail, IT and IT enabled services. Its current market is the urban base of pyramid, serving socially and economically disadvantaged undergraduate and graduate students in tier 2 and tier 3 colleges. The firm was started in 2009, by Surga

Thilakan and Sreeram Vaidyanathan, alumni of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. In a short span of time, it has quickly scaled up and expanded, largely due to its slick business model and timely funding opportunities. It currently operates in 10 sates of India, working with around 150 colleges and has trained over 50,000 students to date.

IMPACT

During my internship, I was able to deliver the following results to iSTAR:

1. Rolled out pilot skills training program in 4 sites in 65 days – which was 15 days before the target deadline

2. We admitted 1700 students into our program, and 83% of them were from families in the bottom 2 quintiles of India’s per capita income

3. InAmbasamudramandDharwad, the colleges expanded and set up their first full-fledged computer lab because of our pilot program, improving the infrastructure facilities of the college.

4. Each of the 23 recruiters we have tied up with has agreed to a compensation that is between 35% to 90% higher than the mean family incomes reported by the students to their colleges. This is a substantial increase in disposable incomes for students who will be recruited at the end of the program.

5. iSTAR successfully raised Series B capital, which will enable expansion into bottom of the pyramid and ramp up technological and geographic presence.

Nashwa Khali

Organization: Vodafone Farmers Club / Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSMA)
Country: Ghana

NASHWA: GSMA1, working with a wide range of mobile network operators and civil society organisations, is launching a series of nutrition-focused m-health and m-agriculture initiatives in South Asia and sub- Saharan Africa, called mNutrition. The objective of mNutrition in mAgri is to create and scale commercially sustainable mobile services enabling smallholder farmers to improve their nutrition, yields and incomes. The product to be delivered and evaluated is the Vodafone Farmers’ Club. The service is a bundled solution offering agricultural information in addition to voice and SMS services. In order to measure the causal impact of the Farmers’ Club product, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) will conduct an external impact evaluation of the mAgri programme in Ghana in November 2016. A randomized encouragement design will be implemented. Specifically, some communities will be randomly assigned to receive additional marketing and promotion of the Farmers’ Club product and some communities will not be assigned to the additional marketing and promotion. The additional marketing and promotion will consist of price discounts, advertisement scripts, and gender targeting.

Rationale for Intervention

The rapid expansion of mobile phone access to populations at the base of the income pyramid presents an unprecedented opportunity to expand coverage of nutrition and agriculture services to this previously overlooked segment of the mobile market. Mobile phones and computer centers are the most targeted channels to provide not only technical and scientific information on crop production and nutrition, but also to support the marketing of products that can help level the playing field between small producers and traders. Agricultural extension services delivered via mobile phones can in theory promote ‘nutrition-sensitive’ interventions by creating competent and efficient farmers who are able to increase productivity by making effective use of knowledge and information which is delivered to them.

Broadly speaking, nutrition-sensitive agriculture is aimed at improving the nutritional status of a population by maximizing the impact of food and of agricultural systems, while minimizing the potential for negative externalities regarding the sector’s economic and production-driven goals. In the last few years there has been a visible trend in agricultural policies and programs to become ‘nutrition-sensitive’ by leveraging agriculture to maximize nutrition impact. Yet there is an identified need to better understand the linkages between agriculture and nutrition, and to decipher the ways in which agriculture can contribute to improved nutrition. Despite the potential of mobile services coupled with agricultural change to improve nutrition and diet quality, very few studies exist that critically assess the application of mobile phone technology for nutrition in resource-poor settings.

Farmers’ Club

Farmers’ Club is a bundled solution offering farmers agricultural and nutrition information in addition to voice and SMS services. The target market Vodafone expects to attract is about 450,000 Farmer Club users by 2016/17 across 8 regions in Ghana: Eastern Region, Western Region, Ashanti Region, Central Region, Northern Region, Volta, Brong-Ahafo, and Greater Accra. Researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) are conducting a rigorous mixed-methods evaluation to estimate the impact of mNutrition and to understand how the context and the components of the mNutrition intervention shape its impact. To estimate the casual impacts of the product on farmer’s behavior, knowledge, nutrition, yields and income, a randomized encouragement design is being implemented where some communities are randomly assigned to receive additional marketing and promotion of the Farmers’ Club product and some are not assigned to the additional marketing and promotion. The additional marketing and promotion will consist of price discounts, advertisement scripts, and gender targeting.

The goal of the impact evaluation is to measure the causal impact of Farmers’ club on behaviors and outcomes linked to nutrition and agriculture. But before a full scale impact evaluation is rolled out; which is resource and time intensive IFPRI decided to do a pilot, which is the leg of the project that I was brought on to do. Essentially the purpose of the pilot was to test the assumptions of the evaluation and related encouragements before they are rolled out for the study and to test willingness to pay for the Farmer club product. As soon as I landed in Ghana I had three priority areas to work on:

1. Build relationships with potential implementing partners and all the involved stakeholders; including Vodafone, The University of Ghana, and ESOKO2

2. Collaborate with Vodafone to do user feedback surveys for existing Farmers’ Club customers. This would help the research team at IFPRI understand the rates of take-up of the service as well as the perceived benefits of subscribing.

3. Set up the IRB3 protocol, as well as pilot evaluation that would allow us to answer the following research questions:

   •   How effective is the Farmer Club at increasing the knowledge and changing the behavior of farmers?

   •   What are the impacts and cost-effectiveness of the Farmer Club product on household’s dietary diversity, agricultural income, and production?

   •   Does targeting women increase impacts over and beyond the impacts of a non-targeted Farmer Club product?

  What is farmer’s willingness to pay for Farmer’s club?

The preliminary data gathered while I was in Ghana evidenced that Farmers’ Club positively enhanced the livelihoods and quality of life of smallholder farmers by improving access to information, financial services and supply chain solutions, delivered via mobile phone. Furthermore the mNutrition component of the intervention promoted behaviour change around key farming decisions and practices via mobile nutrition content.

Mark Karugarama

Country: Rwanda
Organization: Zamura Feeds LTD

MARK: "Over the summer, I had the opportunity to work with a young but promising social-enterprise in Rwanda’s growing Agri-business sector. Located in Musanze District, Northern Rwanda, Zamura Feeds LTD operates in the commercial livestock feed industry. It is a relatively new industry, formerly subsidised by the government, but slowly becoming more and more commercialised, to effectively cater to the growing needs of farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs in the region."

My responsibilities revolved around 2 major activities; i) working directly with cooperatives and small-holder farmers to assess their needs and ii) designing a marketing and distribution plan to use a similar business model to reach parts of Southern and Eastern Rwanda, as well as neighboring border towns in Uganda and the DRC. This model will be used in conjunction with distribution centers to determine the most cost-effective way to get the product to market and to reach even those farmers in the most rural areas.

"We worked with farmers on two fronts; i) farmers who purchased the feed for their farms/animals and ii) farmers who supplied all the input (i.e maize bran, whole maize, cotton seed cake, sunflower seeds, soybean, limestone, shells, and a multitude of other inputs). An effective distribution channel would therefore be helpful not only for selling the product, but also in sourcing input--which Zamura pays competitive prices for, to ensure the farmers are making enough to support themselves and their families. Gaining an understanding of the farmers and their families’ economic goals and aspirations--and how the company is working closely with them--had a deep and lasting impact on my entire internship experience.

Two of my colleagues and I traveled off-site, twice a week, to meet with smallholder farmers and small businesses in the border towns of Goma (Congo) and Kabale (Uganda), some of whom are clients of Zamura Feeds. In discussions with farmers and cooperative leaders, we were able to get further insights into people’s overall perception of the product, and note down any challenges; access; price, effectiveness, etc. My experience was greatly shaped by thought-provoking conversations with farmers and the cooperatives they work with, which help them get their produce to market. I have learned a lot both from the businesses perspective and from the farmers who seek to lift themselves out of poverty. Challenges abide, but the agribusiness sector is ripe with opportunity and potential."

"Production success stories were told across the livestock production sector in other neighboring villages we visited for not just dairy farmers but broiler,layer and swine farmers whose goals intersect at one point: increasing yields be it of eggs, meat or milk/dairy products. It inspired a feeling of hope in me, that simple but well-organized animal husbandry could have such a tremendous impact on people and help them lift themselves out of poverty, especially in a country where around 67% of the population depends on agriculture for their sustenance. Overall, the internship experience was for me a learning opportunity unlike any other."

Lauren Jencik

Country: Malawi
Organization: Project Concern International

LAUREN: "I accepted an offer as a Humanitarian Assistance Fellow with Project Concern International (PCI) in Zomba, Malawi this past summer. Prior to Fletcher, I had lived and worked in the Washington, DC area for years. I studied international affairs in college, held a nearly two-year internship with the State Department, and worked for both a development and then management consulting firm. In other words, my life revolved around the workings of the Beltway both in an academic and practical sense. Part of my why I came to Fletcher was to fully immerse myself in my studies, particularly given the breadth of human security courses. More importantly, I knew that as a full-time student, rather than a part-time student in Washington, DC, my summer would offer the perfect opportunity to finally work overseas. Having worked in the public and private sectors in DC, I was especially interested in working with a non-profit organization that dealt with a complex array of issues around development and disasters; PCI offered the perfect opportunity.

PCI is a mid-size non-profit organization, founded in 1961 by a doctor from San Diego (where the organization is still headquartered today). Per the organization's website, PCI's mission is "to empower people to enhance health, end hunger and overcome hardship." The organization has expanded over the years and covers an array of issues in the increasingly integrated fields of development and humanitarian assistance. One area in which PCI has expertise in humanitarian assistance is Disaster Risk Management (DRM). DRM is led by the notion that communities can be empowered to reduce vulnerability to future shocks and stresses created by disasters. Disasters may include earthquakes or floods or prolonged events including droughts—they can also be the result of conflict or political turmoil. In the case of Malawi, many communities are vulnerable to environmental shocks and stresses due to a combination of factors some of which include economic status, health and well-being, gender, and livelihood. This has been particularly the case more recently as the country has been experiencing a severe drought, brought on by El Nino, and was previously experiencing severe flooding."

"While three months is not enough time to have a major impact within any organization, but especially in a development and humanitarian assistance one, I left PCI at the end of August confident that my work was well-received among my supervisor, fellowship coordinator, and project leadership. During my last week at the office, I was asked by the Chief of Party to provide a debrief to him and the Country Director because both valued my feedback on my experience and wanted to understand the extent of my work for the purposes of ensuring continuity within Njira. Furthermore, as referenced above, I am awaiting a follow up email from my fellowship coordinator, who just wrapped up a visit to Zomba to begin start up of a newly awarded emergency response project. I am optimistic that the conversations that will take place will include discussion of further developing the food security assessment tool and best practices and lessons learned document, as well as ideas for how I can remain engaged on Njira throughout the coming year."

Paroma Husain

Country: Uganda
Organization: BRAC Uganda

PAROMA: "During the last summer I spent almost three months working with the Microfinance programme of BRAC in Uganda. BRAC is an NGO that started as a small post-war rehabilitation operation in the newly born Bangladesh in 1972, and grew to be one of the largest NGOs in the world. BRAC now operates in 12 different countries across Asia and Africa; taking its years of experience from Bangladesh in implementing successful models in various development programs such as health, education, microfinance, and community empowerment into other developing countries.

Uganda is BRAC’s largest and fastest growing operation in Africa. In the last decade, Uganda has grown consistently, at an average rate of 6.4 per cent. It has made significant progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals and is now focusing on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. But approximately 20 per cent of Ugandans still live below the poverty line and they are mostly concentrated in rural areas. While there are a number of financial institutions providing financial services to marginalised groups, they have limited operations in rural areas. With 147 branches all over Uganda and more than 180,000 borrowers served, BRAC Uganda’s microfinance program is one of the biggest in the country and it reaches out to the poorest in both urban and rural areas.1 Besides microfinance, BRAC currently operates programs in small enterprise, agriculture, poultry and livestock, health, education, youth empowerment, adolescent livelihood, and the Karamoja Initiative in Uganda. To date the programs have served 4.4 million people, which is almost 12% of Uganda’s population.2 Before Fletcher, I have been working in BRAC’s microfinance program in Bangladesh. This summer I had the wonderful opportunity to work with and learn from my colleagues in Uganda."

"My three years of experience with BRAC Bangladesh had made me curious to find out how well BRAC can apply its learnings and program models from Bangladesh in a starkly different country context. Working with BRAC Uganda gave me an opportunity to assess the success and failure of BRAC’s international scaling efforts. My overall conclusion is that while there are some things BRAC is doing quite well in its country offices, it can do a much better job in many other aspects. For instance, there is a clear cultural divide between Bangladeshi expats, who generally occupy higher management posts, and the local staff. While the highly standardised operational models were so crucial in BRAC’s amazing success story of scaling in Bangladesh, strict compliance of these standards can overlook the contextual operational needs in a different country. There is also a resource constrain in the mostly donor-depended programs of BRAC International that BRAC Bangladesh does not have to face. As a result,

many effective client oriented programs and monitoring tools that have proven to be effective in Bangladesh cannot be implemented in other BRAC countries. Based on several of these observations, I can make the following recommendations: (The suggestions made in this section are mostly based on interviews with clients and staff members and observations from field visits – which are often anecdotal and not grounded in rigorous studies.)"

Ananth Ganesa

Country: Sudan
Organization: World Food Programme

ANANTH: "My internship was with the Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (VAM) unit in Khartoum, Sudan. VAM collects and analyses data from thousands of households every year – particularly in rural, poor and food insecure populations – to provide WFP program managers and the broader humanitarian community with information, analysis and advice. VAM’s information has direct consequences on programming, and could translate into activities such as food distribution - which could in very literal terms decide the fate of a household’s survival."

"My role involved travelling to field offices across the Darfur states. I learnt a lot about on-the- ground realities during such missions. My last such trip was in June, I was in El Fashir in North Darfur interviewing program staff and brainstorming on how the VAM unit can help them make better program decisions. During such discussions, I learnt extensively about the process of WFP’s programming in Sudan – from how project proposals are submitted by NGO partners to how they are reviewed, and how projects are implemented over a specific timeline and within a certain budget based on several contingent factors. Part of VAM’s role is to help identify the “who, when, where” in targeting programs, so I spent time learning how such targeting decisions are made – which gave me a good macro-understanding of WFP’s operations. Field offices in general are a great place to learn the harsh practical realities of the humanitarian experience and

I believe Sudan provided ample training ground to do so. Since my role involved extensive cross- departmental collaboration where I had to work together with several of our staff for days and weeks at a stretch, I would say my inter-personal and communication skills helped in the process. To have clarity of thought and express ideas effectively was important in my role, and this is a strength that I used to my advantage. Further, the ability to digest large amounts of information, diagnose what the issues are and creatively design solutions, is something that I have used throughout this internship . Finally, technical skills in analyzing data, writing food security reports and software such as MS Excel and SPSS helped magnify my impact in the project as well."

Justin Erickson

Countries: Managua, Nicaragua
Organization: Technoserve

JUSTIN: "This summer I worked at Technoserve in Managua, Nicaragua. Technoserve is a large international non-government organization that works in the areas of agriculture and entrepreneurship. They are based in Washington, D.C., but they have offices in Africa, Latin America, and India. I worked out of Managua, which is their headquarters for Central America. About one hundred people (almost exclusively Nicaraguan) work out of the office. I traveled to El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala during the internship. The eight-week long internship was formalized on the part of Technoserve as part of their Volunteer Consultant Program. Volunteer consults work on projects in all of the areas Technoserve works.

Technoserve brought me on board in order to better understand their place in the entrepreneurship assistance market in Central America. They are currently running two entrepreneurship programs in the region. One is called CRECE. CRECE is a program for young people to help them develop their business ideas or start-ups. The other is ITE, which stands for Impulsa Tu Empresa (push your business). This program is for small and medium enterprises in the C-4 region (Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala) to grow their businesses. The average business in this program has about 14 employees and does about $200,000USD in sales per year. Both of these programs have been running for about three years in the C-4 region. About 75 businesses participate in the program per country per year."

At the end I created a thirty slide presentation and presented it to my supervisor in Managua. We then looked discussed some changes to be made and I turned in a final report. I was invited to give my presentation to the Director of Entrepreneurship in Washington, D.C., and so after my fellowship ended I went to D.C. to give the presentation. Using my work, Technoserve has a better understanding of its place in Central America, ideas for how it can create more impact, a qualitative review of their two main entrepreneurship programs, and a starting framework that will appeal to funders as they are in the process to raising money to support the programs in the future.