From Skepticism to Community-Informed Collaboration

The Trust Gap

When I first arrived in Sampa, Ghana, and began speaking with local leaders, it was clear everyone had already heard some version of my story before.

“That won’t work,” a cashew aggregator told me with a smile that was half welcome, half warning. Years of broken promises had left behind a quiet skepticism, and an exhaustion with outsiders and their initiatives. On the surface, the community seemed content with the status quo, but beneath it was a deep fatigue with extractive systems that rarely left anything behind.

I was there with goodCashew, a small social enterprise exploring a new approach: a digital engagement platform to help farmers access training, markets, and fairer prices. But before we could build an app, we had to build something harder: trust.

Learning to belong

I started small: one school, a few teachers, some parents, and a handful of curious community leaders willing to see what might happen. Instead of scheduling formal meetings, I helped organize a Parents’ Day celebration at a local K-8 school where most families grew cashew.

There was music, laughter, speeches and the easy chaos of children showing off their schoolwork. Between the applause and the pauses, I began to ask quiet questions: What are you proud of? What do you wish your children had that you didn’t? What would make farming feel like progress again?

Become familiar

Over the following weeks, I trained local teachers to administer simple questionnaires and record observations. Because they were trusted, people answered freely. I joined school assemblies, shared meals, and became part of the daily rhythm.

Small loops, big learning

We ran short cycles of learning, testing, and reflection. Every few days, I shared what we were hearing — sometimes over lunch under a cashew tree, sometimes in the teachers’ office. Together, we mapped what wasn’t being said aloud:

• Farmers wanted guidance, but not lectures.
• They valued consistency more than promises.
• They trusted familiar messengers, such as their neighbors, teachers, church and business leaders, far more than anyone who arrived with an official title.

We turned these learnings into small design experiments. Teachers would invite farmers to small group sessions after school, where we simplified the research questions into stories and pictures instead of forms, turning “data collection” into storytelling, where each participant’s words carried visible weight.

As the gatherings continued, a deeper pattern emerged: schools weren’t just places of learning; they were symbols of progress and dignity. Parents saw them as spaces where their hopes for their children could take root. By working through schools, we found a natural bridge that connected curiosity, pride, and trust, turning classrooms into quiet centers of community change.

What changed

The deeper the relationships grew, the faster the learning moved. We discovered that most farmers used the same term for Good Agricultural Practices and organic certification. This is an insight that shaped how we later designed our training materials and crafted our messaging. Participation rates tripled when teachers, not outsiders, (including an extension officer for the Ministry of Agriculture) led discussions. And perhaps most importantly, the conversations began to continue without me.

The outcome wasn’t just a report, we co-designed a community-led, data-driven model for engagement that goodCashew could build on. Our app’s onboarding now mirrors those early encounters: familiar faces, local language, small steps first. While local leadership is highly valued and preferred, we also learned that the outside perspective is also welcomed, and knowing when and how to step in could be key to goodCashew's success.