It’s early morning in Kehancha. The roads and footpaths are abuzz with all kinds of traffic. Children are cheerfully running towards school, farmers are headed to their shambas speaking animatedly about the weather and the prospects of a harvest better than ever before thanks to Nuru Kilimo (Kiswahili for agriculture). A glance down the valley …
After nearly a year in development, I am are very excited to announce the launch of the Nuru Salesforce database for the CED program! The Salesforce database supports CED operations by effectively organizing the details of CED membership, group savings account transactions, and individual loan applications and payments into one system. Custom reports can quickly …
Nuru International’s Agriculture Program focuses on addressing the need of hunger in communities that live in situations of extreme poverty. How does Nuru International Agriculture Program address the need of hunger? To take a closer look at this question, let’s discuss a hypothetical example of one farmer. Chacha, a farmer in Kuria West, Kenya, has …
As we kick off a new year of Outreach and begin our work with Mabera schools, I would like to reflect on the need that Nuru’s Education team targets. As our programs grow, we remain intently focused on the needs of the communities we serve and work to ensure our program’s target those needs and …
On 24 February 2013, a new chapter in Nuru’s mission began: Nuru started a second country project in Ethiopia. This expansion is the culmination of years of work and is a crucial step in the Nuru model reaching proof of concept—which is our precursor to scaling the organization to more and more countries. The importance …
Last week the Leadership team embarked on our first training of the year, Focus Project One (FP1). This training is meant to teach Nuru staff some of the basic concepts the organization is built on. It focuses on how we as an organization define such terms as extreme poverty, self-reliance, and sustainability. It is also …
When you start working at Nuru, one of the first things you will hear about is the concept of servant leadership. Nuru’s Education team is lucky to have a leader that exemplifies this value every day. Victoria Tissian has been Nuru’s Isebania Division Program Leader for the past two years. Vicky has seen huge changes …
Hot, sunny days are slowly transitioning into cloudy cool ones as the long rains season is about to start in Kuria West. Farmers are busy finishing up their short rains harvesting activities and preparing their land for the new season. At Nuru Kenya Agriculture, the staff have just finished distributing loans of fertilizer and certified …
2013 is a busy year for our Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) team at Nuru International. We are launching an M&E component into Ethiopia and we’ll be collecting impact data for our Agriculture, CED, Healthcare and Education programs in Kenya. In Ethiopia, Kristin Lindell is one of our newest Fellows and has joined us to help …
We have sold almost 1,000 handwashing stations in our community to date. This means that we have impacted the hygiene of around 5,000 community members. Community members have seen the value of its low cost, rugged design, and health benefits. With this success, the next problem we wanted to tackle is to prevent re-contamination of …
A Ki-Swahili expression one gets used to after a little while on the ground here is tuko pumoja (are we together?). Often used to check for understanding and agreement in conversation or a staff meeting, these words steadily creep more and more into my English usage as well. That’s the question we always need to …
In the Nuru International Agriculture Program, I often find myself planning and anticipating what’s to come: the next few years, the next season, the next activity in the field, or the next month’s outlook for rain. Nuru International’s Agriculture Program is growing, with a robust program under Nuru Kenya and a nascent program under Nuru …
Happy New Year from Kenya! The Healthcare team reconvened after a restful Christmas break full of enthusiasm and hope for the year ahead. We began by reflecting on the achievements of the past year that included scaling to a new division, launching our social marketing program and helping to stop a measles outbreak. But don’t …
Today, I have the privilege of introducing our newest addition to the Community Economic Development (CED) team, Mr. Ibrahim Sifuna. Mr. Sifuna was hired as Nuru Kenya, Community Economic Development Program District Manager as of January 2013. Mr. Sifuna was born in Kakamega District, western Kenya. He is married and a father of six children. …
Before the end of the year, the Leadership Program was gearing up to make quite a few changes, and now that we have entered January, these changes are in full swing. First, we are currently working on growing our team. With two staff members leaving us during the holiday break, we have now hired two …