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 …
With our new expat team (FT8) two weeks into their roles, we’re feeling really good about the progress that will be made over the next year. Our team’s ‘transition’ began on our arrival to Isebania on June 1st. We spent the next four weeks working closely with the exiting expat team (FT7), first learning from …
The past month has felt like a whirlwind and I am happy to say that I have landed firmly on my feet in Kuria West, one of the most beautiful places I have ever had the privilege to live. Taking over the blogosphere torch and that of Leadership program manager initially felt like a daunting task, but …
Well, in our last post you heard from Kelly Gannon, our newest M&E Fellow/Program Manager in the field. She has, of course, been doing a bang-up job so far. She has made the rare transition from a Stateside position to a field position. We have had plenty of people do the reverse – transition from …
It seems like we do this every couple of months and if feels like just yesterday when I came and was transitioning with Chelsea and Tanner to become the new Leadership Program Manager. Even though it was my second rotation in Kuria, I was stepping into a new program to work with a couple of …
(This post is written by our M&E Fellow, Kelly Gannon, and posted by me, Gabrielle Blocher) I have spent much of this first month absorbing and observing as much as I can during our transition from FT7 to FT8. It’s been great to connect the work I was doing remotely from the US since February …
It is such a pleasure in my last two blogs to be able to introduce you to the CED team. Last month, I introduced you to Andrew Chacha, the CED Program Leader. This month is my last month on the ground. I am passing the baton to Elias Fanta, the new CED Program Manager. We …
As we are gearing up to start the R&D program, I thought it would be nice to share this inspirational video of our field manager’s six year old son, Abedi. One branch of the R&D program is product design, which will require a lot of empathy and creativity from our staff. Abedi shows us just …
If you spend any time around these blog-parts (sounds gross), you have might been exposed to the fact that we have characterized our current set of operational programs that are up and running in Kenya three ways: We have two sustainability programs, and those are the Leadership Program and IGA R&D and M&E are support programs …
“Put yourself into life and never lose your openness, your childish enthusiasm throughout the journey that is life, and things will come your way.” That was said by the Italian film director Federico Fellini decades ago, but sprung to my mind earlier today as I observed a classroom of first graders approaching a small box …