AGDES started in early 2006 as a way to express my thoughts on the issues I was interested on; mainly agriculture and rural development but also politics, trade, environment, and gardening. Little by little and thanks to the feedback of many readers, the blog started to become a resource site for students thinking about their future careers, jobs seekers interested in international development, and young professionals looking for advice in their careers. As i try to reach out to many audiences, AGDES is all over the place. One day i use the blog to talk about my garden, another day i use it to express my views on the expansion of soy crops in Brazil. International Development is comprehensive and it will be foolish to try to focus. This generalist approach, i think, is essential to understand development.
Rafael
Merchan is a development practitioner specializing in international food
security and nutrition. He has over five years of professional experience
working for non-governmental organizations, multilateral institutions, and
United Nations agencies in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. While most of his
experience has been in business development, he has also managed projects and
conducted field research. Currently, he is second year graduate student at
Columbia University’s School of International Public Affairs (SIPA), pursing a
MPA in Development Practice.
More recently, as part of his MPA in Development Practice, Rafael interned for the UN’s World Food Program in Mozambique. He help established an office for a new multi-agency UN initiative that supports countries with high burdens of stunting in the scale up of nutrition interventions. He also developed a mapping tool to support provinces in the design of nutrition implementation plans.
Rafael was born and raised in Colombia where from
early on he developed a special connection to farming and rural development.
After obtaining his high-school degree, he moved to the U.S. to continue his
studies in agriculture and natural resource economics at the University of
Maryland in College Park. During his college years, Rafael designed an
inter-disciplinary curriculum taking classes in various subjects related to
agriculture. He also interned at the US Department of Agriculture and conducted
a research project in urban gardening in Maseru, Lesotho.
Rafael graduated with honors in May 2006 and
moved to Nicaragua to work with the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO). FAO was promoting the use of school gardens to tackle food
insecurity and he was asked to assess the impact of such program. During six
months Rafael conducted a cost-benefit analysis, collecting data from more than
40 schools in Northern Nicaragua.
He returned to Washington D.C. to work for the
Intern American Development Bank as a research fellow in the Inter-American
Institute for Economic and Social Development (INDES). In this capacity, he
facilitated a series of workshops on socio-economic themes tailored to Latin
American leaders.
Looking for opportunities that could bring him
closer to the field, in 2009 Rafael started working for Fabretto Children’s
Foundation. Fabretto is an international NGO that offers hope and opportunity
to low income children from underserve rural and urban communities in
Nicaragua. He oversaw fundraising efforts in the U.S., preparing grant
proposals for government agencies, multilateral organizations, and corporate
and family foundations. During his three years at Fabretto, Rafael secured
several milestone grant awards, including a multi-million proposal from USDA
and Fabretto’s first grant from the World Bank’s Development Marketplace
Awards.
Throughout his academic and professional careers Rafael
has always been deeply passionate about food security and nutrition, not only
at a global perspective but also at an intimate level: He’s an avid gardener
with a small plot in a community garden. This hands-on approach to agriculture
reflects on his conviction that one must experience things to truly understand
them. And while gardening as a hobby is very different from a farmer growing
food to feed a family, Rafael’s experience has allowed him to understand what the
plight of millions of people in rural areas is and how to better respond to
their needs.