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| Appendix F. Excel spreadsheet data roll-up |
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OIC International, Inc.
Headquarters/Central Office Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Address: OICI, 240 West Tulpehocken Street; |
Volunteer Trip Report
OICI requires a record of your volunteer activities in order to learn from your work and use that to develop future assignments. USAID also requires a report from every overseas assignment. Documenting and learning from completed assignments is critical to the long-term success of the overall FarmServe Africa (Farmer-to-Farmer) Program. We are particularly interested in the impact of your work on the people and organizations you interacted with. Therefore, we ask you to answer the following questions in order for us to better understand the activities and impacts that occurred during your assignment.
Part A (Please provide the following information)
Volunteer Name (Last Name, First Name, Middle Initial): Bérubé, Conrad A.
Assignment Date(s): November 12, 2007- December 18, 2007
Name of Host(s): Food and Livelyhood Security Pita and Telemele and Fédération des apiculteurs de Guinée. FAPI (Guinea Beekeepers Federation)
Assignment Location(s): Mamou, Kinde and Labe provinces (villages in the environs of the cities of Labe and Telemele and the town of Ley Miro
Number of Individuals directly participating in technical assistance/training: 413
Male(s): 260
Female(s): 153
Number of individuals that you anticipate may benefit from your assistance (for example, other employees of the enterprise you worked with or other family members who are likely to benefit from your assignment): We made extension visits to 18 communities during my stay and I exchanged information with a number of other individuals in my host communities of Labe and Ley Miro. It is expected that the 3691 members of the Fédération des apiculteurs de Guinée will eventually benefit from the tips and training imparted to the technicians of FAPI as these latter conduct their exctension visits. Similarly, OIC field agents will continue to work with at least the 270 honey producers not yet affiliated with FAPI. Assuming that the average rural Guinean household is comprised of about 8 family members then there is the potential that benefits will touch on the order of 32,000 individuals.
Male(s): 16,000
Female(s): 16,000
Part B (Please answer the following questions in as much detail as you think is necessary)
FAPI is pursuing three main goals:
Specific objectives identified for the FtF volunteer assignment to FAPI were:
Specific objectives identified for the FtF volunteer assignment to OIC's Food and Livelyhood Security Pita and Telelmele (FLSPT) were:
2. What activities and assistance played part in your assignment? Who was involved? What topics were addressed? (Details regarding any materials that were developed, the number of people trained, the organizations that participated in your program(s) or that you me with, etc., are all very important.)
The trip would not have been possible without the sustained efforts of stateside staff Michelle Frain Muldoon, Christina Kocisko and Ebenezer Affainie, OIC Philadelphia, Farmer-to-Farmer Progam Coordinators, in liaising with their Guinean counterparts and host agencies to organize the trip and in arranging logistics. Special thanks are warranted to Leon Sakho, Country Representative, and Sidy Conde, Farmer-to-Farmer Project Coordinator for OIC Guinea and to Mamadou Yaya Diallo, President of FAPI, and Tanou Diallo, OIC Coordinator of FLSPT, for all the groundwork they did in organizing and supporting my visit and for the personal attention, and gracious hospitality they demonstrated in welcoming me and orienting me to Guinea and to the project sites as well as in facilitating my debriefing and departure.
Training of trainers was for the most part conducted during village visits with beekeeping groups. Much support was provided by FAPI and FLSPT technicians and community leaders who communicated with rural beekeeping groups to arrange meeting logistics. In addition, in Labe, I was provided accommodations at the FAPI guesthouse and in Ley Miro was very graciously provided lodging in the household of Subprefecture President Aliou Sall and his wife Mariam Delanda. In Gougouye and Sarakele OIC technicians Mamady Komara and Mamadou Lamarana Balde, were kind enough to share their own accommodations. In most of the villages we visited, our hosts very generously provided us a mid-day meal. Travel was done by motorcycles provided by the host agencies and on several instances generators were provided by locals in order to allow me to recharge my computer in order to edit videos and photographs and to use these in training sessions. All of this assistance was crucial to the successful completion of the stated objectives. M. Yaya Diallo of FAPI even leant me his cellphone during the duration of my stay in order that I would be able to receive calls from my wife (a great morale booster). Driver Lamarana Balde and OIC Coordinator Tanou Diallo of FLSPT did me a great service by forwarding urgent messages to my wife and to FAPI technicians. Amadou Bape and other OIC drivers spent long hours accommodating field trips in the Labe and Koubara areas and to ensure that we reached appointed rendezvous in Conakry. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I've forgotten the name of the OIC support person who met me at the airport and helped walk me through the reporting process for my lost luggage on arrival and who accompanied me for several long hours waiting at the airport and who assisted me through the check-in procedures upon my departure from Conakry. (By the way, it would be useful to inform incoming volunteers that they should have their checked baggage ready the morning of their departure, despite the fact that flights leave at night, as the usual routine in Guinea is to check the baggage in the morning at the Air France office. Because I had not been so informed, and wanted to do some souvenir shopping, my luggage was not packed until early evening. Although I checked in as soon as the Air France desk opened for check-in at the airport in the evening, several hours before departure, this "late" check-in may have contributed to the long delay in the arrival of my checked baggage [which showed up a week and a half following my departure from Guinea].)
Village meetings involved:
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o medicinal uses of honey in rehydration drink and as a wound dressing
o possible improvements on traditional hives (hanging and installing access door)
o proper placement of apiaries and hives
o lighting a smoker
o smoking oneself and using cassava leaf juice as a bee repellent
o keeping beekeeping clothing clean and smelling only of smoke to reduce stings
o removing and smoking a sting
o smoking hives prior to inspection
o basic comb manipulation
o identifying brood comb, propolis, and pollen
o recommending harvesting only honeycomb and leaving brood comb in the hive
o cleaning natural enemies from the hive during the swarming season
o protecting hives from ants and termites by banding access points (tree trunk, legs of the hive-stands) with sheep's wool or used motor oil
o rubbing a hive down with lemon grass as a hive attractant during the swarm season
o rotating empty hive in the place of a strong hive (placed in the shade) during manipulations
o basic design of the KTBH and the importance of the "bee space" and central guides in the top-bars
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In addition, technicians were instructed in
- the use of traditional story-telling and role-plays as non-formal education techniques
- the reproduction of newsprint posters
- soap-making and batik dyeing using beeswax and/or honey
- the fabrication of condom candles as an ice-breaker/instructional aid for discussions of family planning and sexually transmitted disease prevention
- accessing the many electronic video and text resources left at each of the host agencies
The technicians of FAPI and OIC facilitated scheduling and logistics of village visits by contacting local civil servants involved in rural development and, more importantly, the community leaders such as the officers or members of the beekeeping groups that have been formed in each community visited. Community leaders would determine the best meeting date and time and informed their respective areas of our arrival.
See Appendix A : List of training materials and texts , Appendix B : Principal assignment contacts during FtF activities , and Appendix C: Numbers of individuals trained during FtF activities for additional information
3. Did you observe any improvements with respect to the objectives and expected results outlined in your assignment scope of work?
The technicians with whom I worked expressed their own satisfaction about the amount they had learned and my own assessment is that they fully assimilated the material conveyed and will transmit that information in their future work. Likewise I am very confident that community members who attended training sessions will spread the knowledge they gained to others in their spheres of influence (in fact, one of the technicians overheard someone in a market several days after one of our presentations recounting the essentials on one of the topics in a community over 25 kilometers from where we had presented the material).
4. Could you see any other impacts by the end of your assignment? If so, what? (Please include any new knowledge transferred, skills obtained by the host, and new attitudes observed.)
It is readily apparent in many of the videos and photos accompanying this report that participants in training exercises were very receptive and pleased with the information provided to them. In particular, I believe that honey producers in the communities visited will no longer dispose of beeswax and, at the very least, will use it in the production of candles (although I would rather see it going into products with greater added value such as cosmetics). In addition, I am confident that most of the traditional honey producers contacted will make changes to the construction of their traditional hives and will pilot KTBH's via the Federation or OIC rotating credit programs. In addition, it is encouraging to see the steps that have been taken to seal various partnerships (FAPI technicians having conducted work with OIC technicians, FAPI technicians having followed up in planning collaboration with PSI, OIC agricultural technicians having worked together with OIC public health technicians, FAPI members having assisted in extension activities outside their own immediate community).
5. Do you anticipate any future impact as a result of your assignment?
(Please explain and list ways in which you think the results of your assignment
can be measured 6 months from now.)
Completed objectives (see Question 1):
Additional objectives or objectives requiring future assessment by FAPI and FLSPT technicians:
6. What effect did your assignment have on you personally and/or professionally (for example, new knowledge, contacts, etc.)?
As my regular job duties are increasingly administrative and managerial and bureaucratic FtF is an excellent opportunity to get back into the field and to see on-the-ground results. My varied experiences in different countries allows me to suggest innovations that might otherwise escape consideration (such as the notion of using chilli impregnated oil to curtail hive raids by monkeys—a technique currently employed to keep elephants out of cultivated fields). In addition, I have found that the experience has fostered personal and professional relationships that I hope will last a lifetime.
In addition, the experience of living "off the grid" again without regular medical, electrical, telephone or internet services also made me more mindful of how opulent life is in North America. In Guinea, one day I shared a local fried dough confection called "gateau" (literally "cake") which is essentially what in North America we would call "doughnut holes". I was somewhat surprised to see that the Guineans ate these small treats in several bites, apparently savouring the morsels that I normally popped into my mouth and wolfed down usually while doing something else at the same time. At least temporarily, I find that I have changed my eating habits, taking my food in small bites and relishing the aroma texture and flavour of my meals, as I saw Guineans do, rather than gobbling it down as had apparently become my habit. This is just a specific example of the greater appreciation for luxuries that living without them can bring. ironically, however I find that living lean also makes those luxuries seem much less like necessities for the full experience of life. At the risk of pontificating I should probably move on, with, as they say, "Thus endeth the lesson".
7. Drawing on your volunteer experience, please provide us with any conclusions and recommendations for follow-up activities to build on your assignment.
In general, the honey producers in Guinea produce a low quality luxury crop (i.e. honey is too expensive for local consumption but of a grade not highly competitive on the international market) and they often do not even save the more valuable commodity of beeswax. Tactics identified to address these issues:
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Part C: In the form of a personal letter to your host, please summarize your short-term and long-term recommendations. (This letter will be translated and delivered to your host.)
Part D: Please attach a list of the names of people contacted during your assignment. (You can photocopy business cards collected or photocopy the contact list from your daily journal.)
See Appendix B : Principal assignment contacts during FtF activities
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| Appendix F. Excel spreadsheet data roll-up |
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