Everything is bigger in Texas – including this year’s convention! This fall, MEDA is hosting Business as a Calling: Women Changing the World. What could be bigger than world-renowned speakers, fine dining, tours of cutting edge businesses and times for networking with emerging and seasoned leaders alike? Nothing of course!

While the seasons are changing at home, jump back in time with us to sunshine and warm weather as you bask in the history, music and culture of San Antonio. The city’s famous Riverwalk and historic sites provide a premier backdrop for the festivities to come.

Among these festivities are a group of world-renowned speakers, women who will share about emerging topics at the intersection of faith and business. This year, we are ecstatic to hear from Leymah Gbowee, 2011 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Sara Wenger Shenk, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary president and Sally Armstrong, winner of three Amnesty International Canada Media Awards.

7:00 am

Rise and Shine!

The breathtaking view from my backyard in Kololo, Kampala. I live on a hill top, where there is fresh air, chirping birds and a view of the city of 7 hills. The sun shines through my windows every morning, so waking up is always a pleasure.

 

Chapati

Chapati is a fried pancake made with flour, water, and oil and cooked on an iron hot plate. These were from a chapatti stand in Jinja, Uganda. They are so good that I always have at least one every day!

7:00 am
Waking up!

This is the view outside of my bedroom window. To the right is the “Myanmar Plaza”; the largest shopping complex in Myanmar that opened just this year. To the left is Inya lake; a manmade reservoir built by the British when they colonized Yangon and named it “Rangoon”.

 7:30 amGetting Breakfast

This little joint is a quick walk from my office and only set up from 6-11am in the mornings. For 700 kyat ($0.7CAD) you can get a full breakfast!

 

Mohinga for breakfast

Mohinga is the most popular Burmese breakfast dish. Consisting of fish soup, rice noodles, deep fried chick pea crackers, coriander, mysterious crunch vegetables and a handful of chili flakes; it’s definitely one of my favorites.

From August 26 to September 1, GROW’s communications team was busy visiting the offices of all our Key Facilitating Partner organizations in order to facilitate a refresher training and capacity building discussion on MSCs. MSC is short for Most Significant Change stories, and is MEDA’s version of a client success story. The template features three main sections: relevant background of client, change the client is reporting and why the change is significant to him/her. Basically it’s one of the ways we collect qualitative (or narrative data) and it allows us to track the project’s success on an individual basis. In addition to individual stories, a few are tracked over the life of the project in order to provide a complete view of the impact.

KFPs are required to submit stories quarterly, and, currently, we have over 40 stories in our catalogue that highlight diverse project areas including conservation agriculture, gender, farming as a business, our value chain partners, technology adoption and financial literacy, among others. Last year, the KFPs all attended a training session on MSCs conducted by GROW’s Senior M&E Manager from HQ and its former in-country M&E Manager. Story quality definitely improved after this workshop and they have been gaining more and more traction, even over the eight months I’ve been in the country. Stories were shared by the KFPs at our annual PAC meeting, they are included in our Annual Report, shared with our donor and partners, appear on our social media feeds, are included in GROW and MEDA fundraising appeals and requested by other managers from HQ for various other purposes.

Hi, Friend!

Thanks for being part of the MEDA family. I thought you might be interested to hear about our new work in Ukraine. Just a few short weeks ago MEDA gift officers Mike Miller and Bob Kroeker were part of a group of 16 travelers to see MEDA’s Ukraine Horticulture Business Development Project (UHBDP).

Ukraine holds special meaning for many Mennonites, including some of those in their group. As they toured the old Mennonite colonies and heritage spots, including the historic Chortitza oak tree – a landmark meeting place, a Mennonite cemetery and the Mennonite Centre, the group replayed old family stories in their heads. For Bob, it was particularly bittersweet, as he walked in the land of his grandparents, who in 1929 had fled for their lives with their young family – including Bob’s mother, then aged four.

Meade Center for American Theater, Washington D.C. hosted the Devex World conference 2016.On June 14, I made my way down to southwest Washington, DC to the Mead Center for American Theater to attend the Devex World conference. The website informed me this was the global development event of the year! From among its line-up of impressive speakers, the conference created five thematic tracks: Data Revolution, From Story-telling to Movement Building, New Funding Models, Innovating at Scale, and Business Transforming Development. 

Needless to say, my interested was piqued and the conference did not disappoint.

MEDA is currently partnering with Cuso International in Nigeria on the Youth Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Access and Development (YouLead) project. The Youth Entrepreneurship Business Support Plan (YEBSP) is one of the many activities aimed at improving access to finance for young entrepreneurs. The YEBSP has been designed and administered as a business plan competition for youth, between the ages of 18-35, who have completed or are currently enrolled in YouLead’s entrepreneurship training program. The YEBSP is meant to kick-start youth-led businesses in the natural resources sector with funds ranging from 100,000 to 300,000 naira (approximately CAD$400 -$1200).

The first and pilot phase of the YEBSP was launched in April 2016 and the results were recently announced on August 9, 2016 [1], after a long process of selection and verification.

1. We started doing economic development before it was cool. Economic empowerment isn’t just a phrase that we pull out at parties. MEDA has been creating business solutions to poverty through impact investing, microfinance, agricultural and entrepreneurship training since the 1950s, and it doesn’t look like that will change anytime soon.

As you know, it is early days for our Myanmar project, Improving Market Opportunities for Women (IMOW). But after a period of dotting i’s and crossing t’s as we built our team and laid our foundation, I am excited that we are beginning the “real work” and seeing areas that, with your generous support, will make a difference for the lives of women in Myanmar.

In June, MEDA helped to support the first-ever vegetable and fruit trade fair in Southern Shan state, where I met a woman grower and mango processing operator. Trade fairs are a great way to network and we made many connections, including one with an organic buyer who has since met with our team to explore opportunities. I saw a lot of potential at this fair, but what I didn’t see were many women farmers! So next year, we want to sponsor women to attend the event, raise their profile, and even create an award for best woman farmer of the year. While other organizations may do similar work to us, no one is focused on women, reminding me of MEDA’s unique opportunity in Myanmar.

Some of IMOW’s work will also focus on women’s savings group. In one village we visited, the first female politician was just elected (pictured below). She attributes her decision to run to the increased confidence and speaking skills she gained from participating in the savings group. MEDA will be working to help groups like hers go to the next level and encourage even more women to take leadership roles. We hope our efforts in villages in other parts of the country where there are no savings groups at all will result in similar stories of confidence-building and empowerment.

Recently we visited two villages where we heard familiar stories of women’s economic roles in Myanmar: Women share equally in farming, are active in the marketplace, are recognized by men as better price and deal negotiators, and typically handle household finances. Yet the man is still the head of the household and is more visible. He is the one who attends meetings and receives training to build his capacity. He receives invitation to events such as the kind of trade fair we participated in. Women remain behind the scenes. But strongly behind the scenes.

Perhaps this G. D. Anderson quote I read just last week sums it up best:

“Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.”

On our last morning, we visited the village of Tongo Hills and the nearby Tengzug Shrine. In order to go inside the community, we had to pay a fee and ask the chief himself for permission to enter his palace and take pictures. He was an older gentleman who looked a bit like a professor with his round glasses and white hair. He was reclining on cushions on his throne where we introduced ourselves and shook his hand. The chief has 23 wives, about 150 children and there are about 350 people who live in his compound. Tradition dictates the buildings are not allowed to have thatch roofs and are made completely of mud, with flat roofs where people sleep outside during the warm season.

Part One of a two-part series on an awesome adventure by our interns in Ghana.

Hi friends! Janelle and Sarah here. July 1st is Republic Day in Ghana (and also Canada Day) so we decided to take advantage of the long weekend and travel to the Upper East Region. This area falls directly east of the Upper West, where we live, and borders Burkina Faso to the north and Togo to the east. Our destination was Bolgatanga and nearby Paga, which are located about smack-dab in the middle of the region. Even though it’s only a few short hours away from both Wa and Tamale, the terrain is vastly different from any we have seen in Ghana so far. There are rocks everywhere! Nevertheless, it seems to be more fertile there, or at least they have received more rain than in the Upper West, because everything was very green and the maize and millet were already knee-high.

Jambo and greetings from Babati, Tanzania. As some of you may know from my previous blog posts, my name is Daniel Simonson, and I am the business analyst/gender intern for the MASAVA project. I have been posted in Babati for almost two months now and have had the opportunity to better understand the inner workings of the MASAVA project. With that in mind, this new blog is intended to keep you up to date on the daily ins and outs of the project from the perspective of the field. Through these bi-weekly posts, I hope to convey some of the challenges and successes we face as a team in the field, and the solutions that we arrive at. I would like to begin by introducing the members of the team that work in the field. In addition, I will introduce other members of the team in future posts.

Hello again from Tanzania! Time for a quick update on what has been a fast paced last couple of weeks with the MASAVA project. I have been jumping around the county between Babati, Arusha and Dar es Salaam. Dar was an especially interesting time as I was able to meet the MEDA team that has been so helpful in getting me up and running. I spent the rest of the week receiving training on the innovative eVoucher platform that the project is using to track the distribution and sales of Vitamin A fortified sunflower oil. Vitamin A deficiency can cause serious problems such as blindness and birth defects; however, because sunflower oil is used in most cooking, fortified oil adds nutrition to any food!

Jambo! (Hello),

My name is Daniel Simonson, and I am the new Gender/Business analyst intern for the MASAVA (Mafuta ya Asili ya Alizeti yenye Vitamini A, which translates to “Natural Sunflower Oil Fortified with Vitamin A”) project based in Babati, Tanzania. I just completed my first week, and I finally have a little time to catch you, the supporters of MEDA, up on the ins and outs of life as an intern.

Part Two of a Two-Part Series about our new FEATs Project in Ghana.

 High quality tree seedlings have a significant impact on trade success and economic growth. With funding provided by the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada, MEDA has partnered with international tree nursery company, Tree Global, to produce and supply high quality cocoa, shea, cashew, and rubber tree seedlings to Ghanaian farmers.

MEDA’s goal for the project is to improve the economic well-being of 100,000 male and female farmers in these four tree crop industries over a span of 6 years. With an emphasis on women and youth, MEDA hopes to distribute 21,000,000 seedlings over the life of the project. Since 2015, the project’s seedling supply partner (Tree Global) has been using leading edge growing technology aimed at producing high quality seedlings that grow faster, have higher survival rates, earlier maturity and increased yields than conventional seedlings. MEDA has deployed iFormBuilder, an electronic data collection tool to collect seedling performance metrics for analysis in partnership with selected academic and research institutions. The results of this analysis would contribute to the project’s policy work and would be disseminated at selected fora.

As part of the project, MEDA is working to facilitate the development of a sustainable seedling distribution network by supporting local businesses and entrepreneurs with matching grants to establish seedling distribution centres called Community Distribution Nurseries or CDNs to get these high quality seedlings into the hands of farmers. Using an inclusive market systems development approach, MEDA is also partnering with key stakeholders including government agencies and industry groups, for example the Ghana Cocoa Board, Global Shea Alliance and African Cashew Alliance to name a few, to make the project successful and sustainable. Through partnerships with major international companies such as Mondelez – makers of Oreo, Toblerone and Cadbury - MEDA is helping farmers to gain access to high quality seedlings and to thus increase their productivity and incomes for years to come. Building the capacity of farmers is vital to their sustainable economic growth and well-being. Incentive programs such as discount coupons offered by the project to farmers, enable them to procure and plant high quality seedlings. Supplementary training on good agronomic and environmental practices as well as business skills equips farmers with the knowledge they need to make their business flourish.


With tree seedling production in Ghana residing at the apex of West African trade and sustainable economies for individuals and communities, MEDA continues to prioritize this work as part of our larger mission to provide business solutions to poverty. So the next time you are wandering the aisles for your favorite chocolate bar or shopping for new tires, remember the farmers in Ghana working to provide better livelihoods for their families and the shared prosperity that occurs when trade, sustainable agriculture and entrepreneurship succeed.

Part One of a Two-Part Series on our new FEATS Project in Ghana. 

Roaming the aisles of the grocery store, one might not expect to find a chocolate bar or shea lotion sitting next to a collection of crisp apples. However, these products unsuspectingly originate from fruit trees just like their apple relatives. Residing on the West African coast, Ghana’s tropical climate allows for cocoa, shea, rubber and cashew trees to thrive, creating an essential export for the country and providing market opportunities for farmers.

One Month…Wow! It is hard to believe that I have already been here that long. I arrived at the end of May and started my six-month internship with MEDA where I am working with one of their partner organizations MiCredito, a microfinance institution. I am inspired by the way that MiCredito develops working relationships with small scale entrepreneurs to provide financial services and a more promising future. I am very grateful and blessed to have this experience. I feel blessed to experience a different culture and to learn how micro-finance initiatives are empowering individuals and businesses.

In my final year of university, I took a mandatory course on business sustainability. As a business major, I found this course was quite boring because of its slow pace. However, our final project influenced me in such a tremendous way that I eventually decided to join MEDA’s work as an intern at its Myanmar office.

CLM+: Haiti
Chemen Lavi Miyò (Pathway to A better life)

For most Haitian women, the marketplace is a familiar environment for buying and selling goods. However, for women living in extreme poverty, some basic livelihood factors must be addressed before they have the confidence and ability to engage in the economy successfully.

Haiti’s inequality is not a simple distinction between the rich and the poor, but a large and growing gap between the lives people lead in urban areas and those of its rural population, where 70% of rural households are considered chronically poor.

Implementing Keyhole Gardens to Improve Food Security for Women in Ghana

When the tropical storms subside and the dust begins to gather, farmers in Ghana become concerned about how to sustain their gardens. With water scarce during the dry season, water retention becomes a challenge. MEDA targeted its keyhole garden project towards women because women produce 70% of Ghana’s food crops. As a result, they have a direct connection with expanding crop cultivation and providing their families with sufficient nutritional needs. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the project’s goal was to extend the growing season for female farmers.