Clinton School student Shamim Okolloh has spent this academic year in Uganda, where she worked with Heifer International a global hunger and poverty-fighting organization, to pilot an agriculture education project to attract youth to farming.
For her final Clinton School Capstone project, Okolloh has worked to connect Ugandan youth with successful farmers to give them a first-hand look at modern farming techniques and technologies in their community.
Okolloh partnered with Mbale Secondary School and Heifer International Uganda to lead a field trip including 33 agriculture students and nine teachers to two Heifer International-supported farms in Mbale town.
The school group learned about activities such as banana multiplication, exotic dairy breeds, zero grazing, biogas production, pasture management, dairy goat keeping, mechanized farming tools, piggery and commercial crops such as coffee.
“At the Heifer farm, the piggery impressed me,” one of the students said of the trip. “I liked the way they were placed in the sty and how they were fed. I acquired the skill to maintain and make them grow faster, so I adopted it and I’m doing it in my village.”
The trip also motivated teachers and allowed them to see the subject they teach can be applied to help the people in the community.
Okolloh also conducted surveys and focus group discussions to get feedback on the field trip from the students, teachers, farmers and Heifer International Uganda staff. These insights helped her develop a guideline for agriculture education program development and resource mobilization for Heifer International to use to engage youth in sustainable solutions to ending hunger and poverty in Uganda.
“Attracting and retaining the youth in agricultural production has been one of the challenges for Heifer International Uganda, where agriculture production labor is mainly from women and the elderly,” said Dr. Joshua Zimbe, Heifer International Uganda’s regional coordinator.
Innovative approaches to improve the attitude of youth toward agriculture are of paramount importance, Zimbe said.
“Shamim’s approach of targeting youth in schools and allowing them to interact with farmers is such a powerful innovation that can help bridge the gap between what they learn in the classroom and what takes place in the agriculture community and positively improve the youth’s attitude toward agriculture in Uganda,” Zimbe said.
Okolloh recommends that Heifer International partner with government agencies such as the Ministry of Agriculture to establish school farms at Secondary schools in Uganda. These will provide a year-round agriculture demonstration site for students, teachers and community members, she said.
Okolloh is from Nairobi, Kenya and will deliver her project guidelines to Heifer’s Little Rock-based headquarters upon her return to the United States in a few weeks.
Okolloh’s collaboration with Heifer International is one of three required field service projects she has completed in the Clinton School’s Master of Public Service program. The program provides students with leadership skills and expertise for careers in nonprofits, government and private sector service work.
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