It's the last day of my fellowship, so you'll have to forgive me if this post is a bit scattered. The thing is, at the end of my fellowship, I don't quite know where to begin this post. It's funny, because at the start of my fellowship, I didn't know where to begin either.
Imagine if. “Imagine if we could track farmer production, and set production goals.” “Imagine if all our potatoes were of high quality.” “Imagine if we could track products from the point they were delivered by the farmer to the point they arrive at the client’s warehouse.” Imagine if.
I’ve been silent for a while. But it’s not because I fell into a tech hole while helping build a mobile sourcing tool for one of our partners, a cooperative that receives product orders from large supermarkets and disperses them among farmer associations and their farmers.
Remember how a few posts back I mentioned I was a bit tech challenged? Well, the plot has thickened. I’ve moved a few techs steps beyond teaching farmers how to turn phones on and off, how to take screen shots, fill out surveys, sync phones, and troubleshoot.
I was bouncing around on the back of a moto, mud splashing my legs, racing around mountain bends, admiring the breathtaking views of green mountains stacked upon green mountains, the coffee fields creating maze-like designs on the mountain landscape, when I looked back at Miguel, our Field Deployment and Support Specialist, a huge smile on my face.
When I wasn’t battling Dengue Fever (very appropriately nicknamed “Breakbone Fever”) or escaping from a collapsing apartment, I jumped right into the deep end at work. I’m lucky to be joining the Latin America office at a time when a host of projects benefitting smallholder farmers are starting. Our project partners span from government agencies to cooperatives and agricultural organizations.
For my first blog post as a Grameen Foundation Fellow, I had planned to introduce myself and my work in the Latin American Caribbean (LAC) office. I was going to provide information about my studies and recent graduation from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies with a Masters in International Development.
