Recognizing Hard Work

When the AAB program first began in it’s unfinished stages a year ago, AEAs were asked to volunteer in the program. There were given no extra incentives or fuel money, but were asked to uptake the program in order to develop the farmers in their district. In Bongo, seven AEAs joined Megan as they went from field to field implementing three cards revolving around group development. For over a year, the Superb Seven have continued to adapt the program – which is now five cards more – to their work schedules and have put in hours of hard work executing it, even though they haven’t been formally recognized for their efforts. On April 20th… this all changed!

Exhausted from another ‘no weekend’ for over a week with our country meeting taking running all weekend; our team pulled it together and prepped for the second annual AEA Meeting. The AEA Meeting is a chance for EWB to recognize and learn from our AEAs who have dedicated so much time and effort to the Agriculture As A Business program. To be frank, without the AEAs support in this initiative it would be non-existent; however, many have taken the program upon their shoulders and us volunteers under their wings and taken flight.

The first day started off with my Bongo AEAs setting the standard by showing up first (well if you ignore the fact that I told them a starting time of half and hour before the actual). Slowly one by one the AEAs piled into the Catholic Social Centre in Central Bolga. We kicked off the meeting going over the agenda and expectations they had for the meeting as well as what we had of them.  I had the pleasure of being the MC for the event, something I’m not unfamiliar with, but didn’t last long as you’ll soon read.

After getting over the logistics for the 2 days we moved into the part of the meeting all of us EWB volunteers were looking forward to… recognizing each AEA! A few week earlier I realized that our program needed some serious marketing and thought it would be a good idea to get shirts made with the AAB logo on it; that way when AEAs where it to the field, groups would know there here with something credible and of value! One by one we showed our utmost appreciation to the AEAs, and even let there MoFA colleagues toast them.

We thought we’d end the night off on a bit of a high note… Whenever I’m at famer group meetings and the group challenges me to dance, I do, but my AEAs don’t. So I thought we’d turn the tables and get all the AEAs to form a circle and do a bit of ‘farmer group’ dancing! (Video Coming Soon!)

After heading to bed during a huge thunderstorm, most of us woke up the next morning gung ho for the day… not me though. The second round of medications definitely began to take it’s toll keeping me ‘dead’ in bed throughout the whole second day of the meeting.

Despite being down and out the event was still a great success. Decked out in their new AAB shirts, the AEAs went through various sessions with Sarah, Wayne, & Meghan. Wayne showed them the progress that’s been made from groups that have undergone the curriculum, as well as the unique way we are monitoring the program; Sarah then followed up with a discussion on what’s next for AAB and where we hope to go in the days to come; following that Sarah facilitate a discussion on skills AEAs can use to monitor and evaluate their group’s progress; and finally the day ended with Meghan doing a presentation on the differences between Canada and Ghana on association building. Although altogether the meeting felt like a great success, the true indicator of that will ultimately be seen by their performance in the field in the months to come.