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Nuru Kenya Model In Depth

Stages of the Nuru Kenya Model

Learn more details about our approach

1. Target Vulnerable Communities

Nuru specifically partners with vulnerable and marginalized rural communities sharing these distinct qualities:

  • Subsistence farmers
  • Lack of savings to address economic shocks
  • Low levels of financial literacy
  • Higher incidence of preventable disease among mothers and children
  • Poor access to markets
  • Other extenuating factors (e.g. presence of violent extremist organizations)

2. Recruit Local Leaders

Nuru ensures its approach is relevant by working to:

  • Identify emerging community leaders
  • Develop their capacity for managing and growing a farmer cooperative

3. Organize Farmers Into Cooperatives

These local leaders organize farmers into cooperatives and then collaborate with them to provide effective approaches which include:

  • Training in best agronomic practices (e.g. intensification, rotation, intercropping)
  • Access to high quality seed and fertilizer
  • Financial literacy training
  • Means of diversifying livelihoods (dairy)

4. Farmers Benefit From Cooperatives

Nuru works to create solutions that drive meaningful impact for farmers and their families including:

  • Strong links to external markets where farmers get better return on surplus and have reliable place to sell
  • Move from subsistence to farming as a business
  • Improve social cohesion
  • Increase crop yields
  • Increase income
  • Improve nutrition
  • Lower incidence of preventable disease
  • Establish savings to cope with shocks (e.g. medical expenses, climate change)

5. Cooperatives Strengthen Operations

As farmers and cooperatives achieve impact, households and cooperatives become more resilient and:

  • Become functional and profitable business enterprises
  • Improve operational efficiency
  • Begin developing additional services (TVET, yogurt and dairy processing, milling, agrovet)
  • Develop and strengthen local supply chains (coordinating with government, seed producers, etc.)
  • Recruit more farmers

6. Nuru Exits Community

Nuru is able to leave a community and enable long-term sustainability of community-driven solutions to address poverty.

  • Profitable cooperatives unleash the power of thousands of farmer entrepreneurs
  • Farmers and their families have the ability to make meaningful choices for their future
  • Farmers and cooperatives are resilient to shocks (climate change, pests, state fragility, COVID-19)
  • Locally established NGO able to replicate and scale in country

7. Replicate and Scale in New Communities

Scalability is achieved as Nuru staff are able to leave and start the process again in new geographies.

  • Identify new locations using technology (satellite imagery, remote sensing, machine learning), external reports, and field visits