The University of Tennessee at Martin earned a $745,000 three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to enable faculty and students to travel to Kenya to share their knowledge of agriculture, natural resources, nutrition and education with students in the East African nation and, in turn, learn something from the Kenyan students.
The program is called UTM in Kenya, and its mission is to share knowledge for the betterment of both countries.
Dr. Todd Winters, project co-director and principal investigator and dean of the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences
Dean of the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, Dr. Todd Winters, said the partnership started in 2018 when Ernie Williams, the chairman of the Tennessee-based nonprofit organization Innov8Africa, contacted him about getting UT Martin students to Kenya to do sustainable agriculture work with his organization.
“Another foundation that he oversees, the Golightly Foundation, is a scholarship benefactor of a number of our students in both agriculture and family and consumer sciences,” he said. “I visited Kenya and initiated a memorandum of understanding in the summer of 2019.
“We started planning a travel-study trip, but then COVID hit. We brought our first group of students in the summer of 2023, and again this past summer. Each student working with faculty has a service or research project that they work toward when they are on the trip.”
This grant expands on those activities for three more years and includes students in Weakley County schools through the NWTN Local Foods Networks Farm to School programs.
