Poultry mentor wins “Champion for Social Entrepreneurs” university prize
Stone Mountain, Ga. — Mzwandile Duma mentors most of the World Poultry Foundation-supported apprentices in the South Africabased Future Farmers Foundation apprenticeship program. While Duma’s strong background in agriculture is a key characteristic of his leadership, in his mentorship he focuses on developing apprentices’ soft skills and encourages the best performers by recommending them for WPF-funded internships in the U.S.Duma mentors interns across the range of agricultural sectors, but he takes special pride in his poultry apprentices having the lowest dropout rate of any group of emerging farmers in the Future Farmers Foundation program.
“I am driven by the desire to see my mentees grow and strive to be better people,” he says of his impressive success rate.
Beyond the terms of his service contract, Duma also offers assistance to any intern who returns from overseas programs to secure a management-level farm position in South Africa. Duma’s ties to the Future Farmers Foundation go back nearly a decade. Being one of its earliest participants, he interned for a full year in 2010 on a Florida dairy and beef farm. After an additional four years in the dairy industry, he realized his greatest passion was for changing young people’s lives for the better.
Duma manages his own small herd of beef cattle, but in 2014 he shifted his career focus, joining the African Conservation Trust for several years. During this time, he also picked up a qualification in project management, giving him the foundation to take the leap to entrepreneurship with his own training company. 2018 has been a significant year for Duma.
This has been a significant year for Duma. He was recently certified by the South African national government to develop and test the agricultural skills of youths on training programs, and, crowning all of his achievements, in November of 2018 he won a University of KwaZuluNatal award for most promising rising entrepreneurial star. The award, “Champion for Social Entrepreneurs,” was the culmination of a 10-month development intervention by the university designed to prepare social entrepreneurs to scale their influence.
Tying a bow around all three of the World Poultry Foundation’s South African initiatives, Duma also recently assisted Annie Baptiste of Franchising Plus in conveying financial skills to emerging poultry farmers during a one-week course at the KZN Poultry Institute.
“The course was an eye-opener,” he said, “I don’t usually talk about finance to my mentees, but I know that many of them aspire to their own poultry operation one day and need these skills.” Duma looks forward to checking how the participants are applying the training, and Annie is “looking forward to using Mzwandile as a mentor and facilitator in future.”
About the World Poultry Foundation
The World Poultry Foundation (WPF) is a non-profit organization founded in 1997 whose mission is to help solve hunger and poverty issues and promote economic development in distressed areas and emerging markets outside the United States through the production and consumption of poultry by empowering farmers in developing regions.
About Future Farmers Foundation
The mission of Future Farmers Foundation is to provide meaningful employment for Future Farmers and develop them in their full potential. The underlying fulfillment of our work is love and respect. Their goal is to qualify farm managers who are capable of running commercial operations and hopefully become farm owners in due course. For more information, visit www.futurefarmersfoundation.com.
CATEGORY
LOCATION