Ferguson College of Agriculture

This semester, Lauren Lewis Cline, Oklahoma State University agricultural leadership assistant professor, traveled to Amagoro, Kenya, to participate in the Reciprocal Exchange component of the Mandela Washington Fellowship.

 

Cline got involved with the program when the Mandela Washington Fellowship brought 25 Fellows each summer from 2017 to 2019 to the OSU campus. Cline served as the leadership director during this experience and began fostering relationships with the participants. Irene Eytang, Amagoro, Kenya, was a part of the 2019 cohort and began to cultivate a relationship with Cline throughout the experience.

 

Cline spent seven days in Amagoro providing leadership development efforts for the MAMLO Foods team. MAMLO Foods, founded by Eytang, operates a micro-factory which buys and processes peanuts from local farmers in nearby communities. Cline explained how this creates a strong market for their local farmers, who also happen to mostly be women, and ultimately invests in the community.

 

Along with the leadership development efforts, Cline and the team at MAMLO Foods held community engagement events throughout the week. Local farmers, community members and agricultural scientists came to these events, and they were able to tackle some cultural stigmas surrounding peanut production, Cline said.

 

Overall, the program had a variety of goals to help the team at MAMLO Foods and the local farmers in Amagoro.

 

“The project goals were to help strengthen the MAMLO Food team, help them work together more collaboratively and to understand what each other’s strengths are that they bring to the business,” Cline said.

 

Cline said her personal goals for the project included learning more about the culture of MAMLO Foods, as well as identifying what leadership training was needed by the team. She said she would like to “see what opportunities there may be in the future for Oklahoma State Extension and research to support community-based international agriculture efforts like this.”

 

While Cline has since returned to Stillwater, the work on this project continues. The team is now working to develop a comprehensive training tool kit that can be used by the MAMLO Foods micro-factories in the future.

 

Reflecting on her time in Amagoro, Cline said the hospitality of everyone was very memorable. Cline said people cared about having genuine conversations and getting to know one another.

 

“That was probably my favorite thing, just being very immersed in the culture,” Cline said.

 

To learn more about the OSU Department of Agricultural Education, Communications and Leadership, visit the website.

 

The Mandela Washington Fellowship is a program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by IREX.