BRATTLEBORO — Windham World Affairs Council will present Dr. Geoff Dolman, who will speak on the topic “Can wealthy countries help poor countries and improve regional peace?” on Friday Sept. 18, at 7:30 p.m., at the Marlboro College Graduate Center, 28 Vernon St.
Coffee, tea, and conversation will precede Dolman's talk at 7 p.m., and a question and answer period will follow his presentation.
Dolman will reflect on the experience he has gained in the various countries where he has worked, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. He is a rural development specialist with 18 years' experience managing international development projects. He has a Ph.D. and B.Sc. in agriculture. In a number of projects in Nigeria, he supervised interventions in various commodity value chains at producers' and manufacturers' levels; mentored a fertilizer company's program for technical advice to farmers; set up a Monitoring and Evaluation system; and worked with extension services to introduce participatory methods. In Tanzania, he started a project for Jatropha production.
In Afghanistan, he developed value chains for raisins, tree crops, and poultry products, formed and found markets for a farmers' association for organic raisin production and export, and did adaptive research on technologies offering alternatives to the poppy crop. He has specialized in capacity building and technical assistance for adaptive research for edible oil seed, horticulture, and cereal crops in his work in Oman and Egypt. His skills include designing monitoring and evaluation frameworks, training for the use of participatory methodologies, and the logical framework approach to project design and evaluation, and general project management.
He now runs his own farm in Brattleboro.