The smell of burnt trash as we discuss integrating our new accounting processes with Mifos finally brings me back to Kuria. Maybe it’s because I had my most painless trip out yet (39.5 hours from California to Isibania, door to door!), or because it hasn’t been that long since I left, but a week after …
Nuru International CEO Jake Harriman was recently featured on Tonic.com. Writer Will Laughlin wrote the feature entitled Uncommon Valor: A Marine Trades His Guns for Good. The article compellingly recounts Jake’s experiences as a U.S. Marine Force Recon Platoon Commander in the Iraq War, and his decision to leave the military to start Nuru International. …
Bushwacking and Baselines It’s a pretty exciting time to be a part of Nuru because we’re scaling up to new locations. Of course, “exciting time” can also be translated to mean “crazy time” since there’s so much going on. One of my main priorities during my time in Kenya, in addition to training, is to …
Today Francis and I got to talking about early childhood development (ECD). He was stressing the importance of the early years and said, ”You don’t cut a tree from the top, do you? No… you must ensure a child is fully cooked.” While that mix of sentiments had me laughing, his point rang true. A …
Jenga! After just one week into my Kurian rotation I found myself deeply engaged in the core logistics needed to hammer out Nuru’s promising Community Health Worker (CHW) program. I had arrived right before the third and final week of government mandated CHW training and was working with David to design supplemental lessons on topics …
Our interns have begun their work with us! We will benefit so much from a new set of eyes and ears and two new brains on our research team. Big stuff. Nathalie arrived in Kuria over the weekend. She has been very busy doing turnover with David on all activities related to the PIN …
Transitions and Training One of the main priorities during my time in Kenya is to develop a program to educate the community on the dangers of dirty water, and how to get clean water. Some die-hard Nuru fans out there may be asking, wait, didn’t we already do training? And you would be right. However, …
As Thomas gracefully exits Kuria I will try to make a smooth entrance in the Nuru International’s Education Program. My name is Lindsey Kneuven and I have been in Kuria now for a little over 3 weeks. I am serving as the new Education Program Manager, responsible for building on the momentum that my predecessors …
If you are on facebook and have followed much in the nonprofit world, you might have heard of the Chase Community Giving contest. Chase is giving away $5million dollars to 200 nonprofits. I would personally love to see Nuru be among that group. With your help, I believe we can work together to qualify Nuru for …
Development Work Rocks! June 30th was International Aid Workers Appreciation Day, and as this is my last official blog post, I thought I would reflect a bit on my job category. I hear a lot about how hard and miserable this job is supposed to be. I’m supposed to be feeling tired and burnt out, …
One of our summer interns, Nathalie, leaves tomorrow for the field. I tell her she is the second ever Research Team field staff member. The hard part will be ensuring that her allegiance remains with the pajama-wearing domestic-staff warriors here in the States and doesn’t waiver towards the international staff. I hope she doesn’t get …
Transition time in the Nuru Project is a month long whirlwind of action. The culmination of a rotation’s work is all coming to fruition as we transfer all of our knowledge, work plans, initiatives, books, etc.. over to Foundation Team 5. Vivian Lu and I have done two previous transitions with each other, so we …
Reflections on the Past 6 Months Leaving Kuria is always hard to do. But, I’m leaving absolutely delighted with the progress we’ve made, the direction we’re headed and the dedication and talent that my colleague Matt Lee, the new Water and Sanitation Program Manager, will bring to the program. The past 6 months I’ve been …
It seems that is the theme of my life, at least in the past five years since I left my comfortable home and life in suburban Maryland in the summer of 2005 for a country in Central Asia that most people never even heard of. After spending over eight months in Uzbekistan I left in …
I am finally back home after a little more than two weeks on the road. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but my itinerary went like this: Columbus, D.C., NYC, Long Island, D.C., Columbus, San Francisco, Columbus, all in about two weeks. I know, I know, I used to be a consultant, so I …