Entry: Virginia Sopyla, World Cocoa Foundation

Last week, I had the honor to attend the opening ceremony of the first training-of-trainers workshop for Swisscontact’s Proyek untuk Peningkatan Ekonomi Kakao Aceh (PEKA). The project is a Sub-Project Implementing Entity under the Economic Development Financing Facility Project which is supporting economic development activities in areas impacted by the December 2004 tsunami.

A group of approximately 50 facilitators and extension agents are participating in a two-week workshop designed to prepare them to lead Farmer Field Schools. The training is being led by a number of subject-area experts including those from World Cocoa Foundation member companies Armajaro and Mars, Inc., as well as experienced technical experts who have worked on successful cocoa programs in other areas of Indonesia. The first 16-week long Farmer Field Schools are scheduled to begin in October. Over the course of a 21-month period, the project will train 12,500 farmers in five districts of Aceh.

Virginia Sopyla, World Cocoa Foundation; Suharman, Component Manager – Cocoa Production, Swisscontact PEKA; Manfred Borer, PEKA Project Manager, Swisscontact

The opening ceremony was designed to welcome the participants to the training, acknowledge them for their role in improving the livelihoods of Aceh’s cocoa farmers, and to mark the start of the first activities under the project.

Entry: Catherine Alston, World Cocoa Foundation

The Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellowship Program’s Global Cocoa Initiative is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and implemented in partnership with the World Cocoa Foundation. The program supports scientists and researchers from select cocoa-producing countries to complete 2-3 month fellowships at a U.S. university or research institute.

In May, I had the great pleasure of meeting one of the Cocoa Borlaug Fellow alumni, Christiant Kouebou in Cameroon. Christiant is a food technologist at the Institute of Agricultural Research for Development (IRAD) who conducted his fellowship in the United States in 2008 to work on food science research on cocoa products. Currently, he is working on the development of a chocolate spread that will be full of nutrients, have a long shelf life and will be affordable for the majority of Cameroonians. Christiant and his colleagues are searching for creative solutions that can help to improve the health and nutrition of the people of Cameroon. Here I am pictured (second from left) with Christiant (third from left), and Mbalo Ndiaye of WCF (second from right) with staff of the IRAD facility in Yaoundé.

While in Yaoundé, Christiant took us to meet his colleagues at the University of Yaoundé . There, I spoke with professors and students of the biochemistry department and was very impressed with the scope of research and dedication of the students. Each identified a different food safety or nutrition challenge they are focusing on. Like Christiant, they are using the techniques they have learned in their classes and applying their knowledge to relieve the health concerns of the general population. And, with a mentor such as Christiant who has enhanced his research skills through the Cocoa Borlaug Fellows Program, together they will make great strides in their research.