When I boarded a flight to Mali on New Year’s Day,I had no idea how trans-formative the coming year would be for me, both professionally and personally. My experience as a myAgro fellow has been one of the most profound and enlightening of my life. As I prepare to wrap up a year in Mali and Senegal, I wanted to share the most important lessons I have extracted from my experience, in the hope that they might prove useful to any other young people wanting to work (and succeed) in the fields of international development and social enterprise.
- Listen, don’t assume. Working in an industry often riddled with assumptions and best-laid plans, I have been continually encouraged by myAgro’s insistence on incorporating feedback from farmers and from local staff into its business model. I constantly hear positive feedback from our farmers in Senegal, who tell us how appreciative they are that our staff visit them weekly and consult their opinions on how to tailor our program to best fit their needs, rather than merely assuming we know what’s best. It’s actually part of the reason farmers sign up for myAgro! Similarly, members of our local staff are excited to come to work knowing that they have a say in how the program will be shaped. Showing your clients and your staff that you are listening and genuinely care about what they have to say does wonders for building trust, satisfaction and a long-lasting partnership.
- Never underestimate the importance of cultural norms. This one might seem obvious, but I’ve made a fair amount of mistakes here. As an American working in development, I’ve often been guilty of applying my own value systems and assumptions to my work, which often don’t line up with the realities of working in West Africa. Having spent the three years prior to this experience working in DC and New York, I’ve become very accustomed to a fast-paced, often impersonal day-to-day working life. This has caused me to overlook norms whose importance I didn’t fully understand—like the necessity of greeting a village chief and his entire family each time one enters and leaves a village (and how to save face when one forgets this courtesy). Understanding and respecting local norms can make or break your relationship with those you aim to serve.
- Nothing is more important than trust—and it takes time. From the perspective of our farmers in Senegal, there is often a high level of distrust toward foreign NGOs operating in this part of the world—and understandably so. Nearly every farmer you speak with has a story about a well-intentioned foreign organization that came in, gathered information, made a lot of promises, maybe even took people’s money, and left without changing a thing. In order for a social enterprise or development project to succeed, one must make a continuous effort to build trust. This includes both points mentioned above—listening to and respecting the people you aim to serve. It also means not making promises you can’t keep, as well as showing people that you aren’t just going to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice. When we launched our pilot in Senegal, we showed farmers they could trust us by hiring young people from their villages to work as our field extension team and by opening stores in these villages, thereby showing that we were setting our roots directly into their community. But even after nearly a year since we launched, our team still must work diligently every day to build that trust relationship in order to ensure our continued success.
I am leaving Senegal this week amazed by the breadth of what our team has accomplished in less than a year of operation, but also humbled by all the work that lies ahead as myAgro partners with local communities to boost farm yields, raise household incomes and improve the quality of life for thousands of families. Fortunately, I am also leaving with a high level of confidence in the future of the Senegal program, because it has been entrusted to a fantastic team of people that possesses not only the drive to achieve big things, but also (and perhaps even more important)the desire to ensure everyone has a stake in the future we all hope to create.
-Daniel Skallman
