A Guyanese diaspora volunteer ventures back home to help rural farmers market new products locally – and beyond.
After two hours of travelling by speedboat along riverways into the depths of the rainforest, Clive Gobin finally arrives at a tiny community near Mabaruma, in northwest Guyana, bordering Venezuela.
A Guyanese diaspora volunteer ventures back home to help rural farmers market new products locally – and beyond.
After two hours of travelling by speedboat along riverways into the depths of the rainforest, Clive Gobin finally arrives at a tiny community near Mabaruma, in northwest Guyana, bordering Venezuela.
In the remote community, accessible only by boat, there are no roads, no internet and no lights. But there, Gobin finds more than a dozen farmers making soaps and cream. Early in the mornings before the animals beat them to it, the subsistence farmers collect fruit from crabwood trees which is then processed and made into crabwood oil soaps and other products.
The group, known as Wini Naturals, recently entered into a partnership with a large manufacturer in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital, to buy their soaps and repackage them for local and possibly export markets. In recent months, 500 bars of their soap were distributed to supermarkets throughout the country. “Things are looking good for them,” says Gobin.
Volunteering, a natural choice
It’s the type of good news story that not only gives Gobin optimism for Wini Naturals’ future, but reassures him that he made the right decision to leave Toronto to return home with Cuso International to lend his expertise.
Last spring Gobin, who grew up in a rice-farming community on Guyana’s coast, started a two-year Cuso International posting as a market knowledge-sharing facilitator on an Accenture-funded project. Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company with nearly 250,000 employees worldwide.
The project’s goal is to develop and implement market-driven solutions in hinterland agriculture, agro-processing and eco-tourism. Gobin’s work is focused primarily on six women’s groups, who make everything from soap to peanut butter to an award-winning virgin coconut oil. They are amongst the most marginalized and disadvantaged people living in the country’s remotest areas.
“My job is to get all the groups to share knowledge and best practices amongst themselves. Because of [a lack of] infrastructure it is not easy,” says Gobin. “Knowledge-sharing is going to be beneficial. We’re looking at collective wisdom to move things forward.”
Already he’s been travelling to remote corners of the country to meet the women, and to document details of how they make their products and get them to market. The six groups are at different stages of development. Some are contemplating export markets, while others are struggling to market locally.
By sharing knowledge, the fledgling groups will learn from those with more experience and the developmental process will be accelerated. Eventually, Gobin hopes to collaborate with knowledge-sharing projects in other regions.
Beyond borders
After completing a business management degree at the University of Guyana and working in the country’s private and public sector, Gobin was anxious to not only continue his education, but see more of the world. He moved to England where he completed a Master’s degree in information management and got a taste of what life was like in a developed country. He applied to immigrate to Canada and was accepted. “I wanted to explore some new horizons,” he says.
In 2000, he landed in Toronto with a Master’s degree, but no job. Close to five months later he found one at a consulting company, before moving to IBM. After several years of working in Toronto and becoming a Canadian citizen, he decided to return to school, and in 2010 completed his second Master’s degree in information systems, specializing in health informatics, at the University of Toronto.
Looking for new opportunities once again and toying with the idea of combining his expertise in technology with development work, he started checking Cuso International’s website routinely. Not long after, he saw an advertisement for a three-month position in Guyana, researching diaspora volunteers. He leapt at it.
“I feel that there is a role for the diaspora to play in development in Guyana. A lot of skilled people have left the country,” he says. “There’s this big pool of professional people who have done well abroad.”
Cuso International provides opportunities for diaspora communities across North America to volunteer and contribute to development initiatives in their country of origin or heritage.
After returning to Guyana last spring on his second Cuso placement, Gobin immediately saw the advantages he had. Not only did he understand the country’s culture and way of life, but having studied and worked abroad, he brought with him new ways of seeing and doing things. “I think that can accelerate the pace of which we get things done here,” he says. “We also have more up-to-date knowledge.”
Gobin is excited about his work with Cuso International. Already he is seeing more collaboration and knowledge-sharing among the women’s groups, through an umbrella organization they created called the Women Agro-Processors Development Network. By sharing such things as market knowledge, Wini Naturals has connected with the Pomeroon Women’s Agro-processors Association, a group started in 2001 which makes a popular pepper sauce and an award-winning virgin coconut oil (last year, it won first prize at a Caribbean Regional Contest for Rural Innovative Projects held in Barbados).
One of the more successful and organized in the network, the Pomeroon group agreed to sell Wini Naturals soaps at a bustling weekly market in the township of Charity.
“I feel a sense that I can help and I’m willing to help,” says Gobin. “There is room for diaspora volunteering.”
Link: http://cusointernational.org/life-changing-stories/guyana-canada-and-back-again
