Volunteer Farmer Training: An Approach for Sustaining Agriculture Training in African Small Holder Farming Communities
By: Meshark Sikuku, Ripple Effect
This blog was submitted by Ripple Effect as part of an ongoing blog series aimed at highlighting the work of IDEAL Small Grant recipients. This work discusses the research Ripple Effect did as part of their “Evidencing the Sustainability of Volunteer Farmer Trainers” Program Improvement Award.
What is a Volunteer Farmer Trainer?
Following the decline of investments in government extension services in Africa in the 1990s, community-owned extension services have become increasingly important. Without them, rural communities could be left with little to no support to improve their livelihoods and local economies.
Farmers learn a lot from each other as neighbors, friends, and relatives. A successful innovation in one household can easily lead to other families replicating this innovation through peer learning and sharing.
This is a powerful tool that can be tapped into by local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to create greater impact that lasts long after the project ends. Many different models and labels have been used to describe community-owned extension services such as “farmer-to-farmer” learning, “training of trainers,” “lead farmers,” “farmer promoters,” or “peer farmer trainers.” For this blog, we’ll stick with “Volunteer Farmer Trainers (VFTs).”
Many organizations with similar peer-learning models provide a fee to their farmer trainers to deliver formal training sessions. The approach we use at Ripple Effect is unique. VFTs share their skills in informal day-to-day interactions. For example, on their farms, at markets, in self-help groups, at places of worship, or when visiting friends. And it works, which begs the question — why do farmers volunteer?
What Motivates Farmers to Volunteer?
To find out what motivates farmers to volunteer their time to teach their community for free, we asked 109 VFTs from two of our projects, one in Kenya and one in Uganda.
We also followed up with the communities that took part in those projects five years post-project to see if VFTs continued to provide community services after the NGO was out of the picture.
What we discovered was fascinating!
The study found several different factors outside of financial incentives that motivated VFTs to continue providing extension support. Almost all (96%) of VFTs surveyed said they were motivated by gaining new knowledge and skills and passing those on to the community. So, a genuine interest in farming and teaching is essential. Additionally, just over half (57%) also said that altruism or self-sacrifice motivated them, with one volunteer farmer saying:
“What motivates me is the love I have for my community members, I can’t let them suffer, I was given free knowledge, so let me also give it out freely.” — VFT, Judas Peter, Alebtong District, Uganda
Interestingly, another motivation that scored highly was the social benefit of volunteering. VFTs (98%) said that the feelings of respect and recognition in the community and the expansion of their social network were significant motivators for them to continue in their roles. This suggests that although the altruistic impulse is important, it only motivates just over half of the VFTs we interviewed. Perhaps a powerful tool to leverage is reciprocity: the mutual respect, sharing, and learning that strengthens community bonds.
Informal Businesses in Kenya
Our study looked at two projects that ended in 2017, interviewing just over 1,000 community members again in 2022 to see whether they still benefitted from community-owned extension services run by VFTs. We found a surprising difference between the Kenyan and Ugandan projects. In Uganda, 51% of people still received support from VFTs five years later. This was around the level we expected.
However, 87% of people in Kenya were still receiving support, over a third more than in Uganda. To work out why this was happening, we needed to look deeper into the motivations of VFTs to volunteer. In Kenya, VFTs were still providing volunteer services to the broader community, but some had also developed small informal businesses that offered specialized skills and trainings such as poultry vaccination, propagating bananas, and breeding goats. This means that they were no longer working entirely for free, but that the community themselves were paying for their services, and still benefiting from their expertise.
Better Linking = Better Community Support
The formation of cooperatives or ‘hubs’ in Kenya also meant that it was easier for VFTs to reach those farmers. They interacted with 96% of hub farmers in the last year, and in many cases more frequently. See the diagram below for a breakdown.
Additionally, stronger links with government departments and other organizations meant that VFTs were able to keep learning, which could also have contributed to the motivation to set up small informal businesses and continue to support their communities. As we indicated before, 97% of VFTs surveyed said that they were motivated by learning new skills. Partnerships, linkages, and networks among VFTs and government departments, research organizations, and other development partners are not only sources of additional knowledge but also raise the social status of VFTs, which we know is a huge motivator to volunteer.
Note: In the graphic above hub farmers are defined as those who had formed and were working in a cooperative, the control group is households that were not part of the project but reside within the project area, and the treatment group is households that were direct project participants.
Conclusion: A Pathway to a Sustainable Volunteer Farmer Model
What have we learned from this research? Firstly, Ripple Effect’s Volunteer Farmer Trainer model works, and communities are still benefiting from support five years after the initial project has ended.
Secondly, the charity does not need to provide financial incentives to VFTs to seek out new skills and share them with their communities. Some VFTs are complementing their volunteer training in the community by offering fees for specialized services, which improves the sustainability of their volunteering roles.
Thirdly, when motivating volunteers, it is important for NGOs to look beyond just altruism but also consider factors such as increased social standing and respect, and the growth in opportunities that come from improving linkages with the government and other development partnerships.
Want to learn more? Check out our webinar presenting findings from this research! Learn more about this grant here.
This research was made possible by a grant from The Implementer-Led Design, Evidence, Analysis and Learning (IDEAL) Activity. The IDEAL Small Grants Program is made possible by the generous support and contribution of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents of materials produced through the IDEAL Small Grants Program do not necessarily reflect the views of IDEAL, USAID, or the United States Government.
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