IESC Announces Frank Pace Award Winners, Moses Mutugi and Megan Smith

Volunteers have been a critical part of IESC’s mission since 1964. The Frank Pace Award, named for one of IESC’s founders, is given each year to a volunteer expert, or team of experts, who performed the most outstanding project in the previous year.

This year’s recipients are Moses Mutugi of Kenya and Megan Smith of Pennsylvania, who volunteered with our USAID Farmer-to-Farmer Access to Finance Program in Kenya. Moses and Megan teamed up last year to develop a climate-smart feed, nutrition, and production program for dairy cows. They trained farmers at the Ainabkoi Farmers Cooperative on how to cultivate and preserve climate-resilient feed for their cows, ensuring a stable supply during droughts. Severe droughts lead to scarcity in forage and fodder, and in the past, farmers were often forced to either reduce the size of their herds or pay high prices to feed their cows. “Through their efforts,” cooperative manager Stephen Tirop says, “farmers are becoming feed secure and resilient since they are able to produce and conserve feed for their dairy herds even in the face of climate change.”

Moses and Megan also trained farmers on the nutritional requirements of cows and how to mix their feed to optimize milk production, reducing reliance on expensive outsourced commercial feed. This has decreased the cost of producing milk and increased the cooperative’s competitiveness in the market.

The feed program is currently being rolled out to other farming cooperatives in Kenya, helping improve the resilience of Kenya’s dairy farming sector against climate change.