Nuru

Nuru International Gave Us Hope And Showed Us The Light

Today the CED Blog has a guest post from Peter Gati, Nuru’s Community Economic Development Field Manager: “Unlike other assistance provider, Nuru has on the ground experience that provides practical approaches to build capacity leading and increased efficiency, innovation and customer-focused business growth. Nuru are locally based and so we understand the needs of our

MIFOS, Mud, M-PESA, and M-KESHO

Our crops are in the ground; the rains are nearly daily; and I am counting down the days until harvest. This past week: we set forth with our MIFOS deployment; had more unplanned detours due to rain; and the Kenyan banking world was rocked by M-PESA and Equity Bank’s new mobile banking product, M-Kesho. This

Making A Path (With Machetes)?

In this field video update, Healthcare Program Manager David Carreon and CED Program Manager Aerie Changala clear the path to the Nuru house using machetes. Just part of daily life in Nuru’s project in Kuria, Kenya.

Nuru International and Nokia Phones Fight Extreme Poverty

In this field video update learn how Nuru uses common Nokia 1680c cell phones, Opera Mini, and Google apps to facilitate real-time data collection in the field from Nuru’s Kenyan staff.

The Importance of Education for Girls in Extreme Poverty

Well, I’m not a woman and my roar is pretty weak but I’ve been learning a lot about the roar of women and frankly I’m a bit jealous. The education program has been looking to make a big impact and trying to be strategic about the interventions we put in place. We are looking to

Farmers Fighting Poverty with Nokia Google Opera and Safaricom

The Epic of the Nuru Phone: I hear the slow but quickening click-click of cell phone buttons. I see eyes squinting at tiny screens. I smell the fresh plastic wrapping new electronics. I hear the beep of email alerts. I see the data streaming in from the field before my eyes. I feel the rubberized keypad

Poverty Indicators and Global Health

I have an image of Mel Gibson (whose statue I saw in Edinburgh a few years back in honor of William Wallace…is that an example of art imitating art imitating art imitating life?) holding back his troops as they chomp at the bits for battle when I think of where things are with the Research

C-SPAN and Sparkletts

People always ask me what my days are like here, in Kuria. My standard response is that my life in Kenya is pretty similar to my life in Southern California- except different. My blog generally concentrates on the CED program. I try to give updates and unveil our plans for the project. Some of the

Deep Well Marketing Techniques for the Extreme Poor in Kuria, Kenya

What do flyers, cell phones and road trips have to do with clean water in Kuria? On March 25th I posted a video blog showing a group of men and women putting their marketing skills to work to promote clean water in their communities. The educational flyers the well committees created that day have been

Using Google Forms and Cell Phones to Conduct Education Survey in Rural Kenya

For much of April our Foundation Team was on home leave, leaving the project here in Kuria in the capable hands of our Kenyan staff. I went over the deliverables for the month with my team feeling a little nervous because of the heavy use of technology during my time away (so many things can

International Fund for Agricultural Development

As many of you may already know, Nuru has been incredibly fortunate to work with 4 UC Berkeley graduate students at the Goldman School of Public Policy (GSPP).  Each of them are taking the research question “What is the best Metric System possible for holistically measuring the level of extreme poverty in rural villages? ”

BH2O+ 2010 made history!

After 12 weeks of intense planning for BH2O+ 2010, I love to nerd it up and crunch numbers to measure the event turnout: 7 event days + 3 cities + 23 universities + 1500 registrants = BH2O+ 2010 But this year’s BH2O+ event is about much more than calculating the number of how many people

BH2O+ Leadership

Read this insightful and entertaining blog by Nuru staff member, Chelsea Barabas: It was the middle of the afternoon at Bemidji State University and the center of campus looked like a ghost town, save for the dozens of committed students who had shown up to participate in Nuru’s Be Hope to Her.  Although the weather

Pittsburgh Declares Be Hope To Her Day!

The City of Pittsburgh has just proclaimed that Saturday, April 17, 2010 is “Nuru International Be Hope To Her Day.” “We’ve never had a ‘day’ proclaimed for us before – we’re honored,” said Doug Scott, Chief Marketing Officer for Nuru. “We hope that this proclamation will encourage Pittsburghers to participate in BH2O+ this Saturday, and

Introducing the Amazing Nokia 1680

This week, I’m going to talk about exactly what it is I’ve been doing these past two months. My major goal was to set up a data collection system for Nuru. We had decided that phones were the way to go, but which phones, and what system still needed to be answered. For the phone

Close