Returned AgriCorps Fellow: Anna Glenn
Placement: Booker Washington Institute, Kakata, Liberia
Class: 3 (2016-17)
What are you up to now? Tell us about your day-to-day duties.
Currently, I am still living in Liberia with my husband Nathan. We now work for a faith-based agriculture development NGO called Hope in the Harvest. Through Hope in the Harvest, we partner with a local university called Liberia International Christian College and we help to implement their Agricultural Department and related programming. In my role I teach a few agricultural courses each semester, help to train other agriculture teachers in using engaging/practical methods, help facilitate outreach to local farmers, oversee a student club, and also help to manage some of the areas of our research/demonstration farm.
How did your time as an AgriCorps Fellow lead you to the next step in your career?
Through my time as an AgriCorps Fellow, I fell in love with the country of Liberia and the people here. I met people who were eager to move forward and bring about change in their country after enduring years of hardship during their decade plus long civil war, people who still had incredible levels of hope and optimism, despite everything they had been through. They are the reason why I am still here, doing almost the same thing as I was back when I was an AgriCorps Fellow.
How did your time as an AgriCorps Fellow shape your views on international development?
My time as an AgriCorps fellow definitely influenced my views on development. I tend to be a person who generally sees things as very black and white, this practice is good and/or this practice is bad. But working abroad, I learned that things are so much messier than they seem on the outside and much more complicated so that often times hard-fast rules never work. I learned that working in international development takes a willingness to acknowledge my own perspective, be willing to change, and also learn how to be incredibly flexible. These is no one big idea that will “fix” everything, each situation is unique and each person that I work with is unique and so the work takes patience, compromise, and grace.