{"id":50,"date":"2017-11-21T05:31:40","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T05:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/?p=50"},"modified":"2017-11-21T05:46:57","modified_gmt":"2017-11-21T05:46:57","slug":"car-conversations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/2017\/11\/21\/car-conversations\/","title":{"rendered":"Car Conversations"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Ghana we spent an inordinate amount of time shoved three across in small taxis driving across bumpy roads. While the early morning drives were mostly comprised of sleeping, the rides home were opportunities I took to ask question after question of my Ghanaian coworkers. I wanted to hear about their lives, how they ended up working at Farmerline when startup culture is not as coveted as it is in the Bay Area, and what experiences we shared and which ones were totally different. Despite my incessant, sometimes ignorant questions, they happily obliged. I learned a tremendous amount about the Ashanti culture and Twi language from Schandorf who is part of a royal family in his local community. From Lily, I learned about the Ghanaian education system and how to cook Ghanaian food.<\/p>\n

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Lily registering a farmer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a particularly long field day our conversation took a different turn. At the community we visited, rather than the typical small meeting and famer registration, we had walked into a massive town hall that had multiple chiefs present, Cocoa Board members, and a government extension officer. Among a myriad of issues raised in this meeting was the extremely high teenage pregnancy rate in the community. One of the chiefs thanked the female extension officer for being an example to the young women in their community. On our ride home this encounter is the first thing Lily brought up once I had squeezed myself between her and Ben in the middle seat of the taxi. This is the first time that the specific issue of gender inequality had been brought up in our 5 weeks of field visits. She began to explain the gender gaps present in rural areas, women’s access to education, cultural expectations of what girls do etc.<\/p>\n

Honestly, it\u2019s not even an issue that had been on my mind. I had been so focused on getting the right candidates for interviews and hearing stories I had not even thought about ways to address the inequalities so present in the rural, agriculturally based communities in Ghana. But as Lily began to talk about ways that we could somehow incorporate a women\u2019s empowerment program into Farmerline\u2019s farmer services team a switch turned on in my brain. All these questions began flooding in: why were there so many less women at these community meetings than men? Why did so many of these women have to use their neighbors or husbands phones to use Farmerline services? etc.<\/p>\n

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Frida, Akua, Bernice, and Georgette some of the amazing women working with Farmerline<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We got back to the office and I immediately began digging up the pile of \u201cWomen\u2019s Rising\u201d resources buried in our spring curriculum for the GSBF class. I had skimmed these items before but had not dedicated true time to learning them because our project had no direct correlation to women\u2019s agency and growth. Suddenly, I was questioning why not. As I read these materials I was shooting question after question across the table to Lily and we were soon excitedly chatting about ways to include women in Farmerline\u2019s business model. The next day there was a Farmer Service\u2019s team meeting, at the end I stood up and obstinately pitched more inclusion of women in Farmerline\u2019s team. I was immediately shot down. Not because Alloysius and Schandorf were uninterested in incorporating women\u2019s empowerment into farmer service\u2019s operations, but because it was a bad pitch.<\/p>\n

But if I learned anything from my time at Farmerline and watching my entrepreneurial co-workers constantly brainstorm, create, innovate, edit, and fix, was that no was simply not an answer for an issue that really matters. So I abandoned my fellowship case study responsibilities for a day or two and worked on creating a feasible and effective idea of incorporating women into Farmerline\u2019s business model. I asked question after question to my extremely patient coworkers trying to figure out what new pilots could have the highest potential for intentional women\u2019s inclusion. Then I made a slide deck, sat Schandorf, Lily and Alloysius down over lunch one day and delivered my pitch. It was well received, unlike my other pitch, and Lily and I were given the go ahead to work on it.<\/p>\n

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Schandorf, Me, Lily, and Ben walking inputs into a village because the roads were too rutted to drive<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I began the fellowship I never imagined sitting at the table with the CEO and upper management of my assigned social enterprise, pitching them an idea. Women\u2019s empowerment, while important had never been a focal point for me. I never imagined actually being able to actively make a difference. Yet, the days spent in the field learning about these women and hearing their stories and the hours spent in the office where every idea was encouraged gave me the passion and the confidence to give innovation a shot. The feeling I got when I was working on this idea was equivalent to the feeling I get when I have a good running race; floating through the research stage, butterflies during the pitch, the rush of endorphins and motivation to continue working afterwards. This is when I knew the world of social entrepreneurship is where I wanted to be.<\/p>\n

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Some of the many smiles that helped me fall in love with the work<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have always been a relentless optimist but buried in my environmental science classes, I has become more and more cynical as issue after issue was raised: sea level rise, wetland depletion, air pollution, heaps of garbage, water scarcity, food insecurity, the list goes on and on. I hadn’t even realized how lost I had become in academia and the doom and gloom of environmental research. For as long as I can remember I knew I wanted to do “something to help people” but the cliche nature of those words grated against my ears. I knew I had no real solution to achieve that. Being immersed in a company that has such a strong vision for local, farmer-focused innovation that integrates human and environmental issues reignited my optimism and the energy that accompanies it. \u00a0Farmerline showed me how much difference can be made and what passion is able to achieve. My belief in small-scale impact leading to systematic changes was reinforced. \u00a0I learned that the most important thing I can do is listen, really listen, to the stories of others, see statistics as individual people, learn from those on the ground every day, and do my best to amplify their voices with a relentless commitment to innovation.<\/p>\n

I will be forever grateful to the Miller Center, Thane and Keith, and my partners Ben and Caleb, and my coworkers at Farmerline for leading me to a vocation I cannot wait to begin actively pursuing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Ghana we spent an inordinate amount of time shoved three across in small taxis driving across bumpy roads. While the early morning drives were mostly comprised of sleeping, the rides home were opportunities I took to ask question after question of my Ghanaian coworkers. I wanted to hear about their lives, how they ended … Continue reading Car Conversations<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1510,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":1,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"mrudolph","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/author\/mrudolph\/"},"qubely_comment":1,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"In Ghana we spent an inordinate amount of time shoved three across in small taxis driving across bumpy roads. While the early morning drives were mostly comprised of sleeping, the rides home were opportunities I took to ask question after question of my Ghanaian coworkers. I wanted to hear about their lives, how they ended…","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1510"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/58"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/mrudolphgsbf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}