Here’s a guest blog from our BH2O+ City Center Mentor, Janet Checkley: I love cities so much that I went to college to study them. I regularly read journals with titles like, “International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.” I love observing the human relationship in a city: what separates us, and what unites us? …
Facebook has played a major roll in my Nuru story. I actually heard about Nuru for the first time on facebook from my friend and boss, Grassroots Movement Director Billy Williams. Today facebook again has impacted my life. A friend suggested that I become friends with this guy from Chicago. I thought very little of …
“Hi, I am an artist; I mostly do paintings. How can I use that to help Nuru…oh, maybe I could sell some of my paintings and then give the proceeds to Nuru.” Last week, we had a Nuru Tour event at the New Life School of Worship in Colorado Springs, CO. We were able to …
Teaching Management with Kangas and Kitenges John: “I asked for 2 Kitenges, different sizes, with green and yellow, and I asked for money back.” Janine: “Well how much money did you give?” John: “1500/=” Janine: “And how much was the Fabric?” John: “Let me just ask?”
Two of the Water and Sanitation Managers are my old friends and I have just met the other two. Lucas supervises the WatSan Program for all of Nuru Kenya (which continues to include more communities as we scale), Eliza manages the division called Isibania (named after the town) where Nuru began our work, and Elias …
I took my first “business trip” today (March 10th) to Kehancha where many of the government officials for the Kuria West District are located. It is also the town where the Maranatha Early Childhood Teacher Training College where we are sending some teachers to get certificates and diplomas in Early Childhood Development (ECD). We had …
This week, like all of our other weeks, has been jam-packed. We (the CED program and Nuru Research Team) have continued exploring and testing different possible applications for cell phone data collection. In just a short time, a wide variety of cell phone applications have been developed.
Hot topic: data, The Data Deluge, as The Economist calls it. I can’t link to it because it’s subscription-only, but the February 27th, 2010 edition is pretty interesting. There’s a special report about the unbelievable amount of data that exists in the world today, and what companies, governments, NGOs, and individuals wish to and do …
Right now, I am sitting in a Starbucks in Colorado Springs, CO and I am just reflecting on all that has taken place over the past seven weeks. That’s right my friends…seven weeks! Wow, I cannot believe that we have already been on the road for that long! Week eight has already begun and I …
They DID it! They evaluated performance! Nelly and Pius conducted their first Performance Evaluations this week and they did a FANTASTIC job! This has been one of those weeks that just flies by! Explaining the performance evaluation process started on February 15th, when I sat with Nelly and explained her performance eval to her.
Last week I promised to tell you about my second two priorities during my four months here in Kenya, and I fully intended to keep that promise. But, a few really exciting stories I heard this week changed my mind, and I think you’ll forgive me if I instead share what I learned from the …
Someone sent me this TED talk about happiness this week…..and it got me thinking a little bit about my job. One way to describe the Nuru Research Team’s purpose is that we are supposed to ensure that Nuru is doing the right things. We are supposed to ensure that the work that is happening on …
The mission of the Nuru International Education Program is twofold. One is to create communities that understand and value education as a tool set that can be used to improve individual and family situations. The second is to foster communities that act on this understanding by pursuing education as a short- and long-term solution to …
On Thursday, I spent the afternoon in Taragwiti (one of the villages in which Nuru works) at a Nuru Savings Club meeting. We are testing some basic banking transactions using cell phones. Just so we are clear, I am not talking about iphones, blackberries, or anything too high-tech. We have, instead, chosen to use the …
Wednesday night we were at Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA. We had about 75 people in attendance at our event in the Wolff Auditorium in the building that houses Gonzaga’s School of Business Administration. A couple of professors actually made attendance to our event mandatory for their classes. Throughout the presentation, the BH2O+ sign up sheet went around the auditorium. And …