This photo was taken on the return trip from the Center for Agroforestry and Environmental Education in Wawashang, Nicaragua. Photo credit: Henry Quesada-Pineda for InnovATE
You have to take a boat to get to the remote 300-hectare farm in Wawashang, Nicaragua where the agroforestry education and training centers of the Foundation for the Autonomy and Development of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (FADCANIC) are located. But the rural location is part of what makes the programs unique, according to John Ignosh, area extension specialist and member of Virginia Tech’s biological systems engineering department. With funding from the Feed the Future project, Innovation for Agricultural Training and Education (InnovATE), Ignosh and Virginia Tech’s Henry Quesada-Pineda, associate professor in the sustainable biomaterials department, visited FADCANIC in October to study its highly successful entrepreneurial, place-based agroforestry and agricultural curricula.
Quesada-Pineda was a member of a 2014 InnovATE scoping team that assessed the agricultural education and training systems in Nicaragua. One recommendation of the assessment was to develop a case study on successful vocational programs for entrepreneurship to address youth unemployment in the Atlantic Coast region. FADCANIC’s successful agroforestry programs were the perfect subject for the case study. Continue reading
PLU) workshop, “Institutional Performance Improvement in Practice: A Deep Dive into the HICD Methodology” September 24-25, 2015 in Washington, D.C. The workshop provided an overview of USAID’s human and institutional capacity development (HICD) framework and its basis in human performance technology. Participants also received practical advice on how to incorporate the framework into international projects. A round-table discussion provided an opportunity to share experiences and explore possibilities for collaboration between universities and other development partners.