Agros Blog

“There should be an exchange. The rich who have so much should give some of what they have to the poor. And the poor, who have so much faith and who have so much relationship, should give some of that to the rich.” ~ Joel Martínez, Director, Agros Honduras

“You are the first North Americans who have ever visited us. For us, it is a great honor that you have come.” ~ José Pinera, President, Arenales

“Because of your visit, we know that someone loves us. That someone will listen to our struggles, our challenges, our development. We dream of a whole village here, with a school, health care. We are trying to overcome cultural barriers. So if a grandfather among us cannot read, he will want to learn so he can teach his grandchildren.“~ Enrique, Agros village Achotales

We came to walk alongside the poor of Nicaragua and Honduras. To see how they were doing. To listen to their hopes, their struggles, their challenges. To gain a perspective on the place of wealth, an understanding of what it means to share.

We were business people in late career, rising young executives, and MBA students from Harvard and Michigan, hoping to make our mark on the world. We had all decided to set aside eight days to do this. Each of us knew only a few people on this trip. None of us knew everyone. We had a grueling schedule: 6 remote villages in 4 days. And even the most experienced among us was astounded by the outcome.

We went from Agros village to Agros village, bumping and rolling from rut to rut along dirt roads for hours, and then climbing up on foot where our vehicles could not go. When we arrived at the village (always, it seemed, later than we were expected), the men and women were patiently waiting for us. Two of the villages had prepared a lunch (in each case a feast) for us and for them. We discovered how difficult it was to receive so much from those who freely give out of the little they have.After the first village, (El Edén, high in the Matagalpa region of Nicaragua), a pattern emerged. All of us would fan out and talk with the villagers, greeting them in what was for most of us rudimentary Spanish, and asking them how they were doing, asking them to show us what they were proud of, what they had accomplished. They would tour us through their work, and we would then return to a community gathering place, where there would be introductions, speeches, prayers and in one case, a short homily from their pastor.

Some of us were checking up on our investment. We had given to this work called Agros International, and wanted to see how it was doing. Others were kicking the tires, seeing if an investment might be worthwhile. Some were just there to see what this thing was all about, if it was really all that some people said it was.

At El Edén, in the Matagalpa region of Nicaragua, a panel of teenagers formally welcomed us to the village on the parents’ behalf, and went on to describe the village’s master plan. A 13-year-old girl struggled with her first public presentation, forcing herself to look at the Harvard MBAs in front of her, as she described the youth council’s village cleanliness project. At Brisas del Volcan, in the Santa Barbara region of Honduras, Danubia, a woman who seemed to be in her thirties, proudly told us about her work studying with Honduran doctors and nurses, in order to become the village heath promoter. Her eyes glowed with pride as she said, “I was always interested in health, but never thought that I would be able to study it and help others.”

The Brisas village treasurer, Jose Antonio Vasquez, showed us their herd of dairy cattle, a joint project between Agros and Heifer International. Each of the families caring for the cattle had their own cow to milk, he explained. They were giving the calves to new arrivals in the village, families who had fled Los Bordos, the largest slum in San Pedro Sula, to remake their lives as Agros villagers.

Joel Martí­nez, the country director, commented: “In this entire area, these are the only campesinos who have daily access to milk for the nutrition of their family members.”

Midway through our journey, after a long day with two villages, Barry Rowan, an executive who is about to end his leave of absence from his career as a CFO, had an insight: “These people are like the pioneers who landed at Plymouth Rock…they are doing all of this in the hope of a better life and in faith that it could happen. They face tremendous hardship.”

The settlers we were visiting, however, had help: Agros agronomists who were working with them to maximize the yield of their crops and take advantage of the best market opportunities. Agros business people, who were negotiating price and teaching the villagers how to do that for themselves. Agros human development experts, who were supporting communities by building conflict resolution skills and equipping youth councils with their own agendas for the development of their villages. All of these are led by a country director whose vision and commitment to the teamwork of restoring, equipping, and enabling the poor is clearly aimed at lifting his country out of poverty, one village at a time.

Each day was long: Early starts, many meetings, long drives, hikes through rugged terrain in extreme heat and humidity. Over dinner, we would debrief about the many individual and collective conversations and encounters we had had. The table would be animated with conversations and cross-generational interchange: eager analysis and wise perspective, meeting over this act of walking with the poor.

Bill LaMarche, a business consultant for whom the word “retiring” could only refer to his career plans, observed of the villagers he had seen that day: “These are humble professionals. They know what they’re doing.” Jeffrey Clark, a medical instruments marketer, added: “But they have already made huge sacrifices. And it’s clear that they are doing that for their children.” Julia Choi, a Michigan MBA grad whose post-trip move would be to step into a New York City based financial market analysis role, remarked: “I feel like I’m seeing the American Dream. But it’s in Nicaragua.”

“What is wealthy,” asked Drew Jackson, a second year MBA student at Harvard. “We live in the richest country during the most prosperous time in the world.” (Later that night, the students would sit up late, discussing how they would be handling any wealth they might acquire in their future.)

“What’s the next generation of villager going to look like,” asked Josh Archambault, a student at Harvard’s Kennedy School, “that’s what I want to know”. ”

And what’s the ’secret sauce,’” asked Karibu Nyaggah, a Kenyan-American MBA, “what’s the unique thing that makes this Agros village thing work so well?”

The conversation took a pause.

Saona Dove (”my parents were hippies”) Jackson, a student at Harvard Divinity School, broke the silence: “I spent a lot of time with the girls in that last village,” she began slowly, “We played with these girls, whose parents had left everything in order to camp on and farm land that will someday be theirs. They were eager to play with us, to communicate with us, even though they had nothing, and here we were, rich people from another world who did not speak their language.”

“I think the secret sauce is love.”