Yesterday was one of the best days I’ve had in a while. I slot a few days every week to go around and visit the farmers and check up on them to see if they are practicing the farming techniques that we have taught them and just to say hi and see how their families …
Today, the CED field officers were extended formal positions with Nuru. They have been working with us as volunteer leaders for 6 months. For the last few months, we have been training on topics ranging from group bookkeeping to loan approval and management. We also focused on building client trust and relationships, which has turned …
I’ve been rather bored these past few weeks. Why? Because when it comes to our base training, I’m not needed any more. The training materials were purchased (without me). The copies were made (without me). The schedule was made (without me). The logistics were organized (without me). And the trainings were carried out by the …
Over the past couple of months Francis and I have been working with three schools on our School Business Proposal Program. As I described briefly in earlier blogs, this program is designed to help the leaders in a given school (the head teacher, chairman of the PTA, Nuru school representative) brainstorm innovative income-generating projects that …
When I arrived in Kenya, Nyametaburo Health Center (NHC) was in a sorry state. Janine, my predecessor, did an excellent job of identifying needs at the center. And believe me, even listing the problems was quite a task. Counting down, I’ll describe the top three problems at NHC and what we’ve done.
Attendance at the first financial planning workshop for Farming Savings members was 185! 186, if you count the cow that wandered inside during the workshop at Sirori Simba. Apparently, this is a good omen in Kuria. I was excited about the attendance. My field officers were excited about the cow.
At Nuru we try to avoid starting programs that run parallel to the development responsibilities of the national government, such as building our own private schools, repaving public dirt roads, or providing electricity to remote villages. Instead, our approach is fundamentally based on partnership with the community. That means that we intentionally work within the …
An update from CED Program Manager Vivian Lu outside a Farmer Savings Program Workshop.
Mind the Gap – Gapminder I can’t stop looking at and playing with this website: Gapminder. It’s really amazing. It gives you, at just a glimpse pretty much every kind of socio-economic and environmental data (and then some…I just spent some time looking at livestock statistics…not sure where they fit in to those two categories) …
The other night, a man came to the health center. The only nurse, Stephen Sangara, works eight hours per day and then sleeps on the premises. But he’s on call 24 hours a day, every day. The man awoke him, shouting in the night. Mr. Sangara came to the gate and opened it. The man …
In just a couple of weeks FT3 will be hosting the first team of outside observers to come and critically evaluate the work the foundation teams have been doing on the ground over the last year. The evaluation team will be here for almost an entire month gathering data on all five of our development …
I have a scar on my right shin from trying to start a crappy motorcycle that I stalled out in the mud. There’s kind of an art to gracefully negotiating sub-par motorcycles on the goat paths and rutted hills of Kuria West, an art that I am better off leaving to other people, like the …
12:00PM on Thursday. I have been called, right before I am going to eat. The vaccines are not approved by the Ministry of Health (MOH). Even though they were approved the day before, they are now unapproved, which means I have to drive an hour by motorcycle on a very dusty road to resolve the …
If I could choose a superhero power, I would choose to be able to stop time. Mostly, so that I could sleep. Which probably isn’t what a superhero would do. Then again, my second choice power would be to be able to eat 5,000 calories a day without gaining weight. Yes, these are the things …
Some days I can’t help but think, “Geez, I’ve taken a heck of a long commute to get to work.” From the moment I wake up underneath my mosquito net to the last moments I lie awake listening to the rain pound on our tin roof, I am conscious of the fact that I have …