Etienne Renaud-Roy

Country: Burkina Faso
Partner: Fédération Nationale des Groupements Naams
Placement: Improving the management and innovation capacity of farmer union leaders.

Etienne Renaud-Roy is a marine biologist by training, and is the first to admit that he has a unique background for an overseas volunteer with Engineers Without Borders.

“I definitely have atypical experience for a volunteer,” he says “But when I talked with some of EWB’s overseas volunteers, I was inspired by the fact that they were helping Africans better respond to their own needs. I liked this approach and realized that I wanted to get involved.”

Etienne did just that and has now been working with our Agriculture team in Burkina Faso for over a year. Here, Etienne is helping shift farmers from farming for daily survival, to farming as a business. With a business approach, farmers are able to grow additional crops and sell the surplus to support their families over the long-term.

Etienne is an important part of making this a reality. He is working in the northern region of Burkina Faso with the Federation Nationale des Groupements Naams, an amalgamation of farmers’ unions responsible for improving access to services and programs to help rural farmers gain the business skills to better manage production and cash flows, and generate a profit from their crops. Farmer organizations are important partners for EWB, as they represent the needs of farmers and their families.

Etienne is working closely with union leaders to improve the effectiveness of these important services that are helping farmers earn an income. He is focused on enhancing their management and coaching skills to better support and incentivize the field staff who implement the farmer services.

Etienne is also working with the union leaders to improve their capacity to innovate. He is helping them test, and when effective, scale up, forward-thinking approaches, adapting the union’s programs to meet the changing and diverse needs of the region’s farmers.

“During my first year, I sensed that the capacity of union leaders was a major barrier to improving the services to farmers,” Etienne says. “I decided to start addressing this with union leaders in the region by working alongside them.”

Etienne’s work, much like that of the other six volunteers in Burkina Faso, is having a proven impact.

He is ensuring that union leaders in the Fédération Nationale des Grouplements Naams are better managing field staff and helping farmers earn an income from their crops.

“I have seen that our work is creating change,” he says. “Building the capacities of one leader in a union is how our volunteers are impacting thousands of poor farmers.”