Although the Nuru Kenya Agriculture Program is busy wrapping up with the 2012 maize harvest & collecting loan payments from current Nuru farmers, the past few weeks have also been filled with anticipation of the year to come. This September, Nuru Kenya Agriculture is beginning to sign-up farmers in seven new sublocations (the geographical unit …
Even if you haven’t been paying attention to the news, over the last two weeks, as you walk through the streets of Isibania, you notice that there are many children around, but hardly any in their typical school uniforms. They are at home or playing with friends, but not in school. Why? For the past …
Training Manager Robert Ndiritu and District Manager Becky Okinda show the Field Officers in training a video on fast breathing as a diagnosis of pneumonia. I’m writing this month’s healthcare blog while observing the initial Home Visit Strategy Field Officer training for Kehancha and Isibania Divisions. Our classroom at the Nuru Regional Training Center …
“A leader needs to be like a candle put on a light stand to light everywhere. Such leaders are an example in a community and there is need of people to copy them” -Response from a Nuru staff member about what they learned during BNLT For the past three weeks, the leadership team has been …
“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” A common saying around Nuru, and one that one of our Field Managers, Sabora Chacha, made sure that our newly hired Education Coordinators knew as we introduced them to our current staff and planned our schedule for the week ahead. During my first few months on the job, planning …
Harvest season is on. Agriculture and Income Generating Activities are busy harvesting and buying maize. Healthcare is in the midst of a three-week intensive training for new employees, so they can greatly extend their program’s reach. Monitoring and Evaluation is hitting the field to collect data – harvest yields for Agriculture, and baseline surveys before …
I heard the news of the death of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi while I was working in the Nuru Kenya office in Kuria. The news ended two months of speculation about the fate of Ethiopia’s leader. As many of Ethiopia’s fellow citizens, I am shocked by the untimely death of Meles Zenawi. My heart …
The shambas (farms) of Kuria West seem deceptively quiet as the agriculture team and I conduct our fieldwork this week. The fields that just a few weeks ago were full of row upon row of tall, green maize are now barren or occupied by cattle. Along with the maize, the once ubiquitous farmers also seem …
We have gotten a few critiques on how we approach monitoring and evaluation lately from various resources. They are good critiques. I would categorize them two different ways: We have gone through a lot of iterations of our approach to M&E as well as our approach to our interventions themselves, such that at this point …
I am waiting in the Dallas airport for the next leg of my cross-country journey to Palo Alto for our annual International Operations Conference. All of the Senior Program Managers (SPMs), myself, my team, Aerie (our Director of International Operations), and Jake (our CEO) will all be on the Stanford campus for a couple of …
It has been almost two months since FT8 members made Kuria district home. As the rainy season gives way to the dry season most of Kuria is moving to gray from its usual green scene. Everywhere in the district farmers are busy harvesting maize and other products. Business is hot and one can observe maize …
After a busy transition month with FT7, life has settled into an almost familiar pace here in Isibania. The past few weeks have focused on preparation for some important training events that will take place over the next two months. As you will know from previous blog posts, the Healthcare Program uses two complementary strategies …
My Intro to Kuria: Utilizing Local Knowledge to Create Poverty Alleviation Solutions When I first accepted the Agriculture Fellow position with Nuru, I was a bit nervous to take over the reigns of such a large and impactful program. I grew more and more confident during transition as I began acquiring knowledge from the outgoing …
The weeks before I left for Kenya were some of the most hectic of my life. I moved out of my apartment, transferred my things to storage, packed for my journey, and saw my family for a few days. I did all of this in the midst of finishing my dissertation, defending it on May …
To pick up from where Gaby left off on her last “to be continued” post, our M&E team was juggling the idea of using baseline data from three sublocations (that we collected in Nov. 2011) to represent a larger geographic region to which our healthcare program is soon scaling. We recently concluded that we will …