The following week Tamwi and I researched the total cost of all the books Gukipimo needed. The price came out to about 50,000 ksh (approx. 675 USD). After playing with some numbers and estimating how much each farmer in Gukipimo could reasonably contribute to buying books, we decided that for every 100 shillings that Tamwi …
Disease Intelligence Network, Part II A while ago I told you all about the concept of the Disease Intelligence Network. As a refresher, the elevator pitch is this: we plan to collect health data and make it useful to the health workers. We want to know who has a cough (and where they are) this …
Most days, I think about my work environment – meetings outside on the grass surrounded by maize fields and cute children – and I feel pretty lucky. Today is not one of those days. David and I are doing our weekly audit of the health center books, not my favorite task. It’s like a painful …
NEW YORK-14 OCTOBER Nuru International held its first East Coast Benefit at the Hudson Terrace in New York City. The event was a huge success with over 100 people attending. Jake Harriman CEO and Founder of Nuru spoke to potential sponsors about the work that Nuru has completed on the ground in Kuria, Kenya and …
Nuru was honored to be invited to the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta. Grassroots Movement Director Billy Williams gives a quick update from the event.
When I first visited the primary school in Gukipimo I thought, “Wow, this place looks like it came straight out of one of those sponsor a child ads on tv.” Of all the schools we are working with, Gukipimo is the one in most dire need of infrastructural development. While the primary school has the …
One of our initiatives is to set up hand washing stations. Without running water, it takes some amount of innovation to have a place to wash your hands. Our design is basic: a holey cup with a hook, soap tied by twine (covered by the top of a water bottle) and a small pot or …
Today I got to sit in on the Community Development Committee’s weekly meeting. I wish you could have been there, then you could understand why I have a collective crush on the CDC. Watching them interact and work together makes me so happy.
On October 6th, 2009 Derek and I hopped in my hybrid and began the drive from Morgantown, WV to Atlanta, Georgia. Nuru had just received an invitation to be part of the Social Justice Tent at Catalyst 2009. What does that mean? First, what is Catalyst? Catalyst is a leadership conference in Atlanta, GA that …
Initially I was worried that we would have difficulty getting the parents to commit to going to their schools every morning to check attendance. Most of them are farmers, which means that they often take advantage of the cool morning hours to work on their shambas. Yet, when our Education Field Officers presented the idea …
These last few months, we’ve been working hard at Nyametaburo Health Center. The way medicine is practiced here has really struck me. As an example: a friend had a persistent cough. I took the history and physical and narrowed down to a few possibilities. In medical school, that’s when you get the next round of …
Nuru’s all about sustainability. We want our programs to be self-funding as soon as possible. And there are few things more sustainable than profitable business models. One of the best ideas out there on this is the Living Goods model. The idea is basically to use Community Health Promoters (CHP’s, not to be confused with …
Although education is widely regarded as an extremely valuable and necessary institution in this community (Kuria West), a large portion of the farmers we work with never completed primary school. Many cannot read or write. In fact, most of the parents I know have cultivated a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and wisdom solely from their …
Loaders are men who wait by truck stops and along the border to load and unload truck cargo. The pay is high because the work is physically demanding and, eventually, damaging. The career lifespan of a loader is not long. The work is also inconsistent, and between loading gigs they become part of a larger …
Figuring out the economics here is hard. I’m used to the US where people work for money, and there’s no time left in a day. Here it’s completely different. Farm work seems to take half a day. The other half of the day is free. And that’s during planting season. The work gets even lighter …