From Coaching to Agri BDS Francis Shyaka (photo below) is one of the 12 former coaches employed by CSP. He was in charge of cooperatives in Gatsibo District and in neighboring districts. He was the one who followed COAMA cooperative and helped it back on its feet. Thanks to his dynamism, he managed to bring back confidence and trust in a struggling organization. He has been trained by CSP to become an Agri BDS provider. He is currently still working for SPARK, but he hopes that his past performance will help him gain access to cooperatives that will accept to pay for his services. Besides the classical training sessions on cooperative and financial management, he convened many meetings with members and tried to convince them that they had a great potential of doing well if they could accept to meet again and discuss. His strategy was to carry out discussions in small groups of 4 or 5 persons and showed them how it was possible to learn lessons from the past and build something new. Thanks to his patience, he managed to bring little by little confidence, and the cooperative started again. COAMA has currently a production of about 500 tons. “My dream is to see it in few years having a production of 2,000 tons and why not 3,000 tons that is stored according to high standards and that has a market”, he concluded. 46
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