fighting Goliath...

highs and lows

2010-06-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

There are many highs and lows in this job. You never really know what’s going to be coming at you around the corner. That makes for a life that is truly exhilarating, but also one that can be a bit uncertain or stressful at best…and edge-of-your-seat scary at worst. For me, I love this life I have chosen. Seeing lasting change and hope in the eyes of our friends here motivates me to get out of bed every morning and drives me through those really, really rough days…the days when you wish you just would have rolled over and went back to sleep. I had a few of those days last week.

Nuru’s agriculture program is the foundation of Nuru’s model. The main reason for this is that we seek to work in remote rural areas where 70% of the population are smallholder farmers. Revenues generated by the agriculture program position the program as the main economic engine (in combination with the community economic development program) of a Nuru project. The agriculture revenues not only pay for the expenses of the ag program itself, but they are also used to cross-subsidize programs in health, water, and education. Because of this, Nuru’s ag program is the anchor of the whole model.

Nuru’s ag program makes money two ways:
1. Interest from the input (fertilizer and seed) loans we issue to our farmers that increase crop yields and incomes for farmers on average by 300% when combined with Nuru agriculture extension training, and
2. Revenues from our agribusiness side of the program. Nuru acts as a commodities aggregator by purchasing maize from our farmers at a fair price and then selling it to larger external markets. The profits made in this business are then driven back into the program to make it financially self-sustaining.
So as you can see, the maize we buy is a big piece of our revenues equation. We built a granary to store all this maize as we purchase it from our farmers. Some of that maize we sell immediately back into the market, but some we save and speculate with – waiting for prices to go up throughout the season as maize stores in large urban markets begin to be depleted – essentially like a very rudimentary stock market. Sounds like a pretty solid plan, right? Well, in theory it is, and I believe once we get the kinks out, this program will, indeed, generate a significant revenue stream that will enable the project t be self-sustaining. This year, however, external market conditions, the forces of nature, and the conditions in the global economy got in the way. Famine in Kenya last season caused the Kenyan government to import maize from Uganda this season at 15 Shillings/kg…at least 25% lower than the market price in Kenya. Instead of prices naturally increasing as demand increased over the season, prices plummeted as the Ugandan maize and a bumper harvest flooded the market. But that’s not the worst of it for us and our maize.

“They found aflatoxin in a few of the government cereals last week in Central and Eastern,” my colleague said. I had a friend who was visiting our granary to try and help us improve the efficiency of our granary and buying processes in order to increase profits this season. She had over 20 years experience in the Kenyan maize markets. I had been trying to get her to come out for some time now to give us some sound operational advice, but now her words caused my heart to sink. “Are they sure its aflatoxin?” I asked. “100%,” she said. “The government has begun freezing all sales to large millers and exporters to try and contain the crisis.” Aflatoxin is nasty stuff. It is a toxin produced by a naturally occurring fungus that can be found in soil and moist or decaying vegetation. Aflatoxin is one of the most carcinogenic substances out there. In small amounts, it is harmless. But it can grow and spread throughout a stored supply of grain where conditions are ripe for its growth. It can become a problem in maize storage if maize is not dried properly prior to storage. The last outbreak in Kenya killed 125 people before it was contained. This time, the deaths have been fewer as the government has tried to act quickly.

“What will this do to maize prices?” I asked. She shrugged. “Not sure. It may actually increase the value of your maize if you can prove your maize is free of aflatoxin.” I became a bit lost in thought as my friend continued her inspection of the granary. I was trying not to think too much about the possibility of losing the revenues from the 200tons of maize that sat there in front of me if our maize was found to be contaminated. 200tons of maize that our farmers sacrificed so much to produce…200tons of blood, sweat, tears, and new hope invested. And then I got some more great news. “Umm…I think you have a problem,” my friend said from across the granary. “You should come over here.” “This is going to be a long day,” I thought. I walked over to where she was. “Listen,” she said. As I listened, I began to hear a faint snap, crackle and pop noise – like when you pour milk over Rice Crispies. “Weevils,” I said in disgust. “Can this day get any worse?” I lamented. “I don’t understand. We used actellic (dust to kill weevils) in every bag. What could have happened?” “Honestly, I don’t know. Unexplainable things like this just happen sometimes. It’s a tough business,” she said. I looked at the mountains of maize in growing dismay as the crackling sound grew to become a roar in my head, and I thought about those little bugs eating away all that hard work. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like your maize is infested with them. If you don’t do something soon, you will lose the whole lot in two weeks,” she said apologetically. Literally in a matter of one hour, my day had gone from reviewing several options for buyers for our maize to trying to brainstorm ways to salvage even a small percentage of it.

Well, the story miraculously has a happy ending. An agent of the UN’s World Food Program tested our maize, and found it to be free of aflatoxin. Because our farmers’ maize is of such high quality (large kernels, clean, dry, and aflatoxin free) the National Cereals Board decided to purchase all of our maize and fumigate it in their own stores after purchase to kill the weevils. What’s even better is that they offered us the government buying price – the best price around in the market right now. So what does all this mean for Nuru? These are the first significant revenues for the project – a total of approximately $75,000! These revenues will be driven straight back into the project now to impact more farmers during this next season as we scale to Mabera and Kehancha Divisions. Nuru Kenya is on track to become truly financially self-sustaining within our five year goal.

So as you can see – hope and excitement to despair and back again…all in a week’s time. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

making solutions last: thoughts on leadership and sustainability

2010-05-29T01:35:00.000-07:00

Nuru seeks to empower impoverished communities to become entirely self-sustaining within five years. To make this happen, we focus on two main faces of sustainability in order to pass the walk away test: financial sustainability and leadership sustainability. Both are absolutely critical to enabling our communities to be completely independent of Nuru US within that five year mark.

First, financial sustainability. We are trying to achieve financial sustainability by pursuing revenue generation projects in all five areas of development: agriculture, watsan, health, education, and community economic development. These models include interest income from agriculture loans, agribusiness revenues from maize trading and speculation, a well buy-in program, micro-lending, transaction fees from mobile banking services, etc. I am excited to report that some of these initiatives are already starting to bear fruit in the Kuria project. We measure and track our movement toward financial sustainability of the project by monitoring something we call the sustainability ratio: revenues generated by the project divided by expenses of the project. A sustainability ratio of 100% means that the project is financially sustainable. I have projected that by the by the end of 2010, our sustainability ratio will be close to 35%! I am very excited about these early results, but this blog post isn’t about financial sustainability…I can talk more about that some other day. This post is about something I am even more excited about: the gains we have made toward the leadership sustainability of the project.

I am passionate about leadership. Most of my adult life has been about leadership, and learning to understand its importance in achieving lofty goals/missions/results in any field. I am what I call a life learner in leadership because the more I learn, the more I realize that I have a long, long way to go. I have learned many lessons – most of them the hard way by messing up – about effective leadership, and I have tried to apply these lessons as I have grown as a leader. At Nuru, training and equipping service minded leaders in our partner communities is fundamentally the most important piece of our model, and we are very serious about this task. Recently, we started a project lead by Chelsea Barabas (one of our international program managers) to codify our leadership emphasis by creating the leadership curriculum by which we train all Nuru leaders – international and domestic. This leadership curriculum will include a plan to identify and screen for effective leaders in a project and then train and equip them to own and then grow their programs throughout the five years of the project and beyond. It is an aggressive project that Chelsea will be tackling over the next 9 months that includes in-depth research into other organizations and corporation and a close look at (through research and interviews) effective leaders of all shapes and sizes from all sectors. She will be studying what the best of the best say about how to become and how to train effective leaders. I say all of this as an introduction to the story that follows – the story of a Nuru leader who has me very excited about the future of Nuru Kenya and our progress toward leadership sustainability.

I walked hurriedly through the muddy field trying to keep up. I was doing my weekly field visits with Andrew, two of his Field Managers, and Gugwa, one of his Field Officers. I love these days of trekking through the ten-foot high maize to check in on the progress of the farmers and listen to the challenges they are facing or just happily listen to a farmer gushing with pride as she shows off her maize to us. On this particular day though, as I swept aside the big leafy maize winding our way through shamba (farm) after shamba of tall maize, I was deep in thought and unusually quiet. Normally, I used these days to try and engage Andrew and the Field Officers in conversation in an attempt to learn more Kiswahili or Kikuria from them (they are incredibly patient teachers), but today I had grown silent as I got lost in my own thoughts.

Throughout the previous couple weeks, I had been contemplating a radical new move in strategy for the project – as a test to measure progress in our leadership sustainability. I will be leaving the project in mid-July, and I hadn’t hired an agriculture program manager to replace me. Our typical model is to rotate our western staff out every seven month to prevent dependency from forming in the Nuru Kenya community leaders on individual personalities on the western team. These Program mangers (western staff) act as mentors and advisers to our Nuru Kenya counterparts and guide the overall strategy of the project toward exit at year five. Program managers do a one month turnover with new program mangers coming in to maintain continuity of the project, but the Kenyan team forms the main consistency and face of the project to the community – further empowering them toward a sustainable exit.

All program mangers had been identified and hired except for agriculture. The agriculture program here in Kuria is the furthest along of the five programs in our track toward sustainability, so I had decided to try a somewhat risky experiment. I decided that we would “gap” the agriculture program on the western staff side for a period of nine months – leaving a Kenyan fully in charge of strategy, operations, and scaling of the project. This is a very critical time in our project because we are about to go from serving 900 farmers to serving approximately 1,700 farmers in this next rainy season – plus we are scaling to entirely new divisions outside our normal operating area. If we can prove successful in this 9 month experiment during this crucial phase of our development, we will be well on our way toward leadership sustainability of the project. Andrew would be the key to the success or failure of that experiment.

Andrew Sinda is the leader of the agriculture program for Nuru Kenya. He has grown to become a selfless leader respected widely throughout our area of operations. He inspires motivation and hard work in all the farmers he leads. He is a humble, quiet servant leader who is welcomed everywhere he goes. The farmers trust him with everything they have and they trust him with their future hopes and dreams for their families. Why? Because he cares for them and he has earned that trust. Andrew doesn’t sit behind a desk dictating the fate of the 900 farm families he currently leads. He is in the field constantly…leading every day by example. He inspires his farmers and all who work under him to achieve levels of performance they didn’t think previously possible. I have grown to really respect and trust Andrew as well. He teaches me lessons in the field every week, and he doesn’t even know it – not just about Kiswahili – but about leadership.

I was nervous about this new experiment in leadership for the project, but I knew that if anyone could do it, Andrew could. He dropped behind a bit leaving Gugwa to talk with the Field Managers about the shambas we were approaching. “Mr. Jake,” he said. “You are somehow quiet today.” This guy doesn’t miss anything. “I know,” I said as I shook myself out of my contemplative state. I knew it was time to tell him. “Andrew, you know I am leaving in July, right?” “Yes. You have told me. Who will be coming to replace you this time?” he asked. “Well…that’s just it,” I said. “No one is coming. I have been meaning to tell you, Andrew.” I took a deep breath. “You will be the next program manager for the agriculture program. No mzungu (white dude) is coming to lead the ag program with this next team.” I stopped walking and looked at his face to gauge his reaction. “Ahhh, OK,” he said thoughtfully as he looked down. He looked back up at me. “But I am fearing you to go.” My heart sank a bit. “He’s worried that he isn’t ready. It must be an overwhelmingly heavy feeling to know that he will be leading this without any help,” I thought. I began to worry about my decision. Maybe I had been a bit too aggressive in our strategy. “It’s going to be all right Andrew. You are more than capable of handling this project. You have the tools you need, and I know that you will do well. The farmers trust you and you are ready,” I said. Andrew looked at me with his bright smiling eyes that I suddenly noticed were full of confidence. “You are not understanding me,” he said. “In truth, we will be fine. We are ready. You have trained us, and we will not let you down.” He paused. “I am only fearing because you are my family and my friend and I will miss you.” He smiled, turned and disappeared into the maize ahead of us to link up with the others chatting with the next farmer up ahead. “And I you, my friend,” I thought. “And I you.”

waking up

2010-03-24T00:30:00.000-07:00

“Habari umeamuka?” Evans said…as he said every morning at 5:45am. I was tired and had just finished the pathetic little workout that I do these days to try and maintain some level of physical fitness. I unlocked the gate and shook Evans’ hand. “Tutaonana jioni,” (see you tonight) I said. He smiled and headed out the gate. Ironically, Evans (our nighttime security guard) knows almost as little Swahili as I do. His mother tongue is Kisii, and he is much more comfortable with that – or sometimes even English. I am always amazed at our friends’ ability here to learn 3 or 4 languages fairly well while I try to understand about 1.3 languages at best – routinely struggling through a conversation by piecing together phrases of languages that I have tried (and failed) to learn. I work on my Swahili with everyone here, but with Evans, sometimes I need to check with Philip for accuracy. “Habari umeamuka…” Evans said these words to me every single morning as I went about the daily “changing of the guard” that involved Evans himself, a trained security guard, turning his post over to Thomas, the next-door neighbor who is one of the leading craftsman in the area for poison-tipped arrows. For whatever reason, Evans’ words stuck with me this morning as I headed back into the house in the dark to carry on with the morning. “Habari umeamuka?” literally means something along the lines of “how was your awakening?” This was Evans’ friendly attempt each morning to greet me and ask me how I had slept. “How was your awakening…” I paused as I started to duck inside. I turned and watched the sun begin coloring the sky and chasing away remaining stars that greeted me each morning as I watched under the spectacular Kenyan sky. For the first time, I began to internalize the words Evans spoke to me every morning and ponder on how they seemed to be so fitting to me of my life and our world here now.

Awakening. Nuru has been a journey of awakening in my life. For many people, the understanding of the absolute crisis that our friends here and millions of others around the world suffer under every single day isn’t that difficult to reach. Once they see a glimpse of it, they see that the injustice of another human being just like them suffering horribly from completely preventable, unnecessary causes just isn’t right. Not only is it not right, but they feel compelled to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Not me. I would classify myself as a hard-headed, world-class idiot. I had been exposed to the issues of extreme poverty most of my life, but I would consistently turn a blind eye and say, “That’s somebody else’s problem. Those people aren’t like me.” I was so wrong. Heaven and earth would have to move to awaken me from my indifference and heartless apathy…and they did.

Combat changes things in an individual and writes stories in your heart that cannot be unwritten. The stories I lived and witnessed revealed a whole new world to me that I had refused to look at up to that point in my life. Stories of desperation born out of a basic lack of choice and opportunity…two words I had taken for granted every day. I saw mothers, fathers, and yes, children – making decisions to end life (usually their own) in the hopes that they could somehow save or give hope to the lives of those they loved so dearly. Desperation colliding with indifference breeds violent, irrational decisions. A haze in my head began to clear as I began to see a disturbing connection between the actions taken by those we were fighting and the motivation behind those actions. This reality was beaten into me time and time again until finally, I came to realize that perhaps one way to fight the enemy we waged war against was to attack the foundation of the movement. Take away the desperation, and you take away the mass recruiting population and army of individuals desperately seeking choice. Extreme poverty did not create terrorism and insurgency, but it was certainly the fuel that was enabling the movement of hatred to grow in numbers and power at such an alarming rate. This awakening propelled me to leave my old life and attempt to begin eroding that foundation that I saw just beneath the surface of the “enemy.”

Now let me tell you about a much braver awakening than the awakening that happened within me. An awakening of a potential and fire within some of the most incredible human beings I have ever encountered…the extreme poor. I have learned so many lessons these last 7 years of my life – from the day I crossed the Kuwait/Iraq border in March 2003 up until today – lessons that have taught me about bravery, selfless compassion, and perseverance in the face of absolutely insurmountable odds. Lessons that taught me what the faces of love, courage and sacrifice really look like. Who were my teachers? The extremely poor. I have been so humbled to learn from and come alongside this incredible class of individuals. These guys are braver, more resourceful, and in most cases more intelligent than I will ever be. They have survived through experiences and conditions in life that I would have completely folded under. It is these lessons that have shaped Nuru’s work and the way we view the extreme poor. The poor are not helpless children that must be coddled and pampered or led along by the hand toward a better life because they are just too ignorant or incapable to get there on their own. No. In contrast, the poor possess an incredible mountain of untapped potential and fire that, if realized, will revolutionize the way we interact as global citizens in our world today. Suddenly, there would be 1 billion new customers in the global marketplace. Imagine millions of educated, trained individuals searching for the cure for malaria or the cure for cancer; designing better public transit systems in overcrowded cities; becoming the entrepreneurs that will act as competitors for the West in the global marketplace – pushing innovation and design to the next level; and forming a whole new class of brilliant young leaders to create political systems and governance that push toward peace and global collaboration. We are so quick to discount the poor, but within their ranks lies the next Jonas Salk, Albert Einstein, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, MLK , and Kofi Annan. Why do we think they are so different?

I have seen this awakening here in Kuria, Kenya. I have seen the power that can result when one person regains his sense of dignity and self worth and really begins to see that there is hope and that the world does not have to be a helpless string of pathetic choices…who will eat tonight – my oldest 14 year old son or my youngest 2 year old daughter? Do I spend the money I have saved for tomorrow’s meal on transport to get my infant dying of malaria to the nearest clinic or watch the other children crying of hunger all night for another night. These are not fun pictures. These are not fun choices to make. In fact, these are not choices at all. Things are different here now, though. I have seen a woman go from this desperate situation of no choices to now feeding her children every night of the week and paying for her oldest to go to secondary school. I have seen leaders rise up in their community and bring hope and a clear path to a better life to thousands of their own people. I have seen a people owning the solutions to their own problems and gaining speed and vision to grow those solutions to impact an entire nation.

Awakenings are powerful. Awakenings can change individuals. Awakenings can change communities. Awakenings can change countries. Awakenings can change our world – but they don’t just happen. Individuals from all walks of life – people like me, you, and my brave friends here like Philip and Milika and Eliza and Chacha – must allow ourselves to take a step in that direction. The first step of any awakening for all of us – no matter where we start from – is just to open our eyes…and see.

times they are a changin'

2009-12-05T02:37:00.000-08:00

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 are doing overall. Yesterday I went around with Andrew and Josephat – Field Manager and Field Officer from Nyangiti sub-location.

Josephat took us to several of his farmers’ shambas and then we finished at his compound. I was a little shocked by what I saw. I entered his compound (two mud huts with tree branches acting as a fence) and there in the center of the compound were around twenty new timber posts sticking out of the ground with several new sheets of metal roofing next to them. “What is this?” I asked in surprise. He looked up and grinned ear to ear. “I am building a house for my family,” he said in broken English. Then he gave me a sideways, knowing look and chuckled…”Nuru maize,” he said with pride.

Things are changing in the Kuria District of Kenya. Last year during this time, Josephat was trying to hire himself out to make enough money to feed his family. Some days there was no work, and his family had no food those days. He had harvested only 3 sacks of maize on his one acre farm that season, and his family needed at least 5 to make it through until harvest the next season. This year was different, though…Josephat harvested 24 sacks of maize from his one acre of land. He paid off his Nuru loan with 6 sacks, set aside another 6 sacks to feed his family, and sold the remaining 12 sacks in the market. He took the extra money and opened a Nuru savings account in the newly created Jamii Development Fund (village bank). Then he took out some of that money, bought materials and started construction of a modest house of timber, brick, and iron sheets for his family.

I have shared a lot of statistics with all of you about the incredible progress here on the ground, but today, I want to give you four powerful anecdotes from the community that demonstrate the unbelievable change that has begun in the Kuria West District:
• Everywhere (in all 23 villages where we work) permanent houses like Josephat’s are going up in the community. Farmers who have always lived in mud huts with cow dung coated walls now have enough money from their Nuru maize yields this last season to construct a real house for their families.
• Secondary school teachers in Isibania and Migori are reporting a remarkable decrease in dropout rates among students from Nyametaburo and Nyangiti. They say that parents are able to pay the school fees for the first time - allowing their children to actually stay in school for the entire term.
• Every couple of months, the government hands out free food aid to the very poorest starving people in the District. It is normally a huge event. 100-150 starving people from each sub-location usually line up to receive the free food. This season was no different - with one exception...while other sub-locations continued to see 100-150 of their people queue up, Nyametaburo and Nyangiti sub-locations (the area Nuru is working) had only 8 people total show up for both sub-locations.
• For years the tobacco industry has destroyed the lives of farmers in Nyametaburo and Nyangiti. It destroys their soil, causes their families to contract respiratory tract infections, causes mass deforestation that leads to soil erosion (because of the required curing process), and fools the farmers into thinking that they actually make money growing the tobacco. Nuru's goal was to get farmers to switch from tobacco to maize (their staple food) to prevent these problems and to fight chronic hunger and severe malnutrition. Alliance Tobacco Company just held an emergency meeting a month ago to discuss how they could "win back their farmers." You see, after seeing the maize results from Nuru's first season, 90% of their farmers decided to grow maize with Nuru this season instead of tobacco.

We said goodbye to the family, and I got a little choked up as I turned to walk out of the compound…knowing that soon, for the first time in his life, Josephat will not be waking up in a mud hut with cow dung coating the walls. “it’s about time,” I thought. “It’s about time.”

to lead is to serve...

2009-09-08T01:34:00.000-07:00

So, the wells are finished, the maize is harvested, the farmers have repaid their loans, and the first phase healthcare construction is complete. I have had a bit of a chance to sit back and breathe for a second this past week…kind of a calm before the storm. We have been driving really hard here of late, so I was thankful that I was able to do some badly needed debriefing and reflection of our methods and model – trying to examine the results that have materialized in the community of Kuria, Kenya this past year.

This past year has produced some very humbling – almost shocking – results of empowerment and success metrics that I honestly did not think would be possible in this first year. On my daily walk to work this week, I was able to do a good bit of thinking about why it is that we have seen such tremendous success. What is the “special sauce” in the Nuru model that has enabled hundreds of farmers to realize very concrete steps forward in lifting themselves and their families out of extreme poverty? This is an extraordinarily important question for me to be able to answer. You see, we are about to start an exciting new phase in the Kuria Pilot project…organic scaling. Over the next year, we will be working with our local team to duplicate the model we implemented in the eighteen villages of Nyametaburo and Nyangiti sub-locations in numerous neighboring sub-locations, divisions, and eventually districts – in a sustainable, effective manner. So whatever the special sauce was that we used here in the first villages and sub-locations must be identified and replicated as we scale the project.

I shook my head and laughed on my way to the field Monday as I thought to myself, “Well, I know I can rule one cause of success out – myself.” Success has come to the Nuru pilot project in spite of a series of fumbles and foibles that I have managed to commit this year…in spite of ignorant (at times arrogant) assumptions I made…in spite of thinking that “I know best” when in fact I had no idea what I was doing. Yes…one thing is for certain – Nuru’s early success had very little to do with the helmet leading the charge. Success had come to our project in spite of my many weaknesses and shortcomings.

So what was it? How did this miraculous progress come about? I started sifting through the various parts of the Nuru model trying to pinpoint the answer to my question. Was it our holistic approach to community solutions? Was it our design thinking approach to need finding and solution building? Our focus on rigorous, unforgiving measurement of our results and impact? Perhaps it was our aggressive partnership strategy – taking the best orgs out there and collaborating with them to prevent wasteful duplication of effort. Or maybe it was the fact that we worked so hard to recruit the best of the best out there to be part of the Nuru team? Certainly all of these things did play a part in the early success we have seen, but none of them seemed to hit the nail on the head.

As I neared the end of my walk, I looked up to see Philip Mohochi, the Chairman of our Community Development Committee (CDC), walking toward me to greet me before our morning meeting. Then it hit me all at once. The success of our model did not depend on the latest and greatest poverty reduction theory or specific application of our business model that had been researched and developed at the “hallowed halls of Stanford.” The special sauce directly enabling the success of the Nuru model was embodied in this man walking toward me…humble servant leadership.

Few things in this world can inspire people to overcome tremendous odds like a good leader can. There are many, many different types of leaders and even more theories on successful philosophies of leadership. I have had the good fortune in my life of serving under numerous leaders of all shapes and sizes, and I have been thrust into several positions of leadership myself as well. After learning my lesson the hard way (a seemingly common theme on my life), I have come to believe that the most effective leadership model out there is the servant leader model. What is a servant leader? Servant…leader…seemingly a bad fit in the same sentence. The word “servant” connotes weakness, vulnerability, humility, and lowliness of position. The word “leader,” on the other hand, conjures images of power, authority, strength, and greatness. “Servant leader”…seems like a bit of an oxymoron, but I propose that it is the most powerful model of leadership in the world today, and it represents the special sauce that the Nuru model hinges upon.

In order to inspire people toward a common goal against insurmountable odds, one must build a solid foundation of mutual respect and trust. This cannot be done where the leader assumes the entitlement philosophy of “with rank comes privilege.” This cannot be done by a leader who removes himself from those he leads to maintain a “healthy separation.” People are inspired by leaders they trust…leaders who are willing to “get dirty” with them. They are inspired by a leader who puts his people first ahead of himself every single time – especially when there is a sacrifice to be made. They begin to trust and respect a leader whom they know genuinely cares for them and does not think too highly of himself to do menial tasks that the team is assigned to do. It is a leader’s willingness to humbly assume a lowly position – to become weak – to be vulnerable – to sacrifice all for his people and mission – that inspires a team to accomplish the impossible.

Philip Mohochi is a model servant leader. He embodies the type of leader that we work very hard to train and equip as part of the Nuru model. Servant leadership is teachable. It is replicable. It is scalable. We are working with Philip and his team to teach it, to replicate it, and to scale it. Servant leadership is the special sauce that I believe will empower an army of determined individuals equipped with the Nuru model to move the world and accomplish the impossible.

east of Eden...

2009-08-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

“Isire has just killed his brother.
-nelly”

David Carreon (Nuru Healthcare Program Manger) stared in disbelief at the text he had just received from Nelly, the Kenyan Field Manager for all Nuru’s healthcare programs. He looked up at me with a bewildered look on his face, and just handed me the phone without saying a word. I took the phone and read the message. A sickening, familiar feeling began to grow in the pit of my stomach as I read the SMS.

Isire Fanuel is one of the best Field Officers working for Nuru right now here in the project. He is a dedicated, humble servant leader who has been absolutely committed to improving the lives of his fellow Kurians. As a Nuru Health Field Officer, he is personally responsible for mobilizing, training, and implementing Nuru health solutions to improve the lives of about 90 families in the Kuria District.

That morning, Isire had gone to his shamba (farm) very early to plow in preparation for planting his short rains maize crop. As he worked, Isire’s older brother came charging up behind him and attacked him with a panga (machete). His brother swung the panga wildly – slashing Isire across the face and then across the forehead in attempt to kill him. Isire struggled with his brother, wrestled away the panga, and in desperate anger and fear, slashed back at him – cutting him across the face and neck. The blow proved fatal, and Isire watched helplessly as his brother bled out on the ground…his brother.

Why on earth had Isire’s brother attacked him to try and kill him? What could drive him to do such a desperate thing?

Land…Isire’s brother was desperate to have his land. Here, land can mean the difference between abject starvation, poverty or death of one’s children and a promising future for the family.

This sad act that occurred here in our community was an event that is all-too common in areas of the world like Kuria, Kenya. The death of Isire’s brother was yet another sobering reminder to me of why I am here. A reminder about why I feel so strongly that we, as citizens of the developed world, must engage in the war that is being waged all around us in order to stop the unnecessary injustice and insanity in our world today.

Extreme poverty leads to desperation. Extreme poverty strips a person of his dignity, his opportunities in life, and worst of all…his choice. Those stripped of all choice are left with desperation. Desperate situations cause people to commit desperate acts – good people who love people and love life. I have seen it in the eyes of the extreme poor time and again.

…in the eyes of peaceful cowherders turned warriors crossing the Tanzanian border with bows and poison-tipped arrows hunting the bandits who stole their cattle – the one hope for future income and food for their starving families. And when they find them, they intend to burn the bandits alive.

…in the eyes of a desperately poor Iraqi farmer picking up a weapon he has never even seen before or strapping a vest laden with explosives to his body and running headlong into an American position. Why? Is it out of some misplaced/ignorant sense of hatred for the West and all it stands for? No. It is out of love. Love for his 5 year old daughter and 3 year old son at home who are starving to death. A love that compelled him to say yes to the jihadist that darkened his door that day. The jihadist who promised food and education for his children if he would only sacrifice his life by attacking these men from across the ocean he knew nothing about.

The good news is that there is hope for those without choice. Their plight is not “just the way the world is.” The world DOES NOT have to be this way. Their plight is a rally cry. It’s time to rise up and answer the cry – to give a voice to the voiceless – to give choice to noble men and women who have been struggling for so long.

Join a revolution that has begun…a revolution to give choices to those like Isire’s desperate brother…to the poor Iraqi farmer…to the 14 year old cowherder. The time has come to get in the fight. Join us and give choice back to those who have been crying out in weary desperation for too long.

Be hope. Be light. Be Nuru…

words for The White House

2009-03-09T05:48:00.000-07:00

I was recently encouraged by a close friend of mine (my brother-in-law) to do something that seemed at face value to be a little ridiculous in today's world...to write a letter to the President of the United States. I laughed for a while at the notion when I first read his email, but over the next week as I walked through the fields with the farmers here in Kuria, his email nagged at me relentlessly.

No matter what side of American partisan politics you have planted yourself on, you have to admit that the election of Barack Obama to The White House has brought new hope to many people...both Americans and millions of global citizens. Nowhere is this more true than in Kenya. I have fielded many interesting questions from our farmers here - everything from, "Will you greet your President for us when you return to America?" to "Do you think that Kenya will become a superpower now that Obama is President of America?" So, in an exercise of blind faith and the belief in the power of a few small voices, I actually did write a letter to President Obama. I am sure that the letter will probably never make it past the third clerk from the left of the water cooler in the basement of The White House, but the eternal optimist in me told me to just give it a shot anyway. I thought I'd share the words that I wrote to him with you as a commentary on America's position in the world as seen through the humble lens of an American in the middle-of-nowhere, Kenya. Here are the words that I sent to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, USA. Please take them with a grain of salt.

__________________________________________________________________
1 February 2009

Dear President Obama,

I write this letter to you from a remote corner of Kenya called the Kuria District. I write this letter, as I have so many other letters in my life, from the front lines. This time, though, my letter comes from the front lines of a very different war than I am used to fighting…the war on extreme poverty.

As you read this, I realize that you face more challenges than any President in recent history: a war on two fronts, a global community that has been disenchanted by the once benevolent global partner turned bully that is the United States, and an economic crisis at home that has many Americans looking to the horizon with a great deal of uncertainty and fear. I know that even now, the hopeful expectations of our great nation – and in fact the entire world – must weigh heavily on your heart. I know all of this, but I want to ask you, sir, to pause for fifteen minutes this day to read the humble words of one of the citizens of the nation that you now lead. You taught me to believe again in the power of one voice…a power that you restored to the American people when you were sworn into office eleven days ago, so I ask you now to give audience to one of those voices.

I had the privilege of serving as an infantry and special operations platoon commander in the Marine Corps for seven and a half years from 1998 to 2005. During that time, I led Marines on four operational deployments including two combat tours in Iraq – one as a part of one of the leading Marine Corps units during the invasion in March 2003 and again in 2005 leading my guys in direct action and reconnaissance and surveillance missions just south of Baghdad. My eyes were opened to a lot of things during my days in combat. War is a horrible thing. It destroys lives and does things to people that can’t simply be taken back. I learned the very definition of evil on the battlefield. One of the greatest lessons that I learned on the battlefield, though, is that the war on terror will not be won on that battlefield alone. In order to win the war on terror, we must attack the enemy at the source. I had several very personal, deeply emotional experiences in combat that I feel revealed that source to me…extreme poverty. The job assigned to my men and I was to take out high level terrorist leaders. However, when we did that, someone from the ranks would always step up quickly to take their place. The strength in terrorist organizations lies in the foot soldiers. Foot soldiers are driven into these groups because they have no real choices in life and because of the growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots in this world – fueling a steadily growing hatred. Extreme poverty drives sane, compassionate people to do desperate, horrific things. I was so moved by the lives I encountered that I decided to leave my old job and wage the war against terror from a different angle…by fighting extreme poverty. I left that old life to found an organization called Nuru International that develops innovative, sustainable solutions to extreme poverty in impoverished communities around the world.

I am not naive enough to believe that there is no place in the war on terror for military action. On the contrary, military action is necessary to cut off the leadership and resources of the terrorist movement; however, the true fuel of this movement of hatred is the young men and women driven into these groups out of desperation – like the desperation of parents too poor to send their children to any school other than the nearby madras where they learn very little about the disciplines of reading, mathematics, and the sciences, and a lot about the discipline of hatred. A strategy involving an attack on both flanks is the only way we can win this war. Military intervention without a genuine effort to combat extreme poverty in partnership with our global neighbors is only fuel to further ignite hatred and empower the movement of terror in our world today.

I believe in America. I believe in the idea of a nation where all men and women genuinely do have equal opportunity in life; a nation where freedom is not seen as a precursor to anarchy or just a token catch phrase on a political platform but a founding pillar that breathes life into the people. And I believe that freedom is worth fighting for…even dying for. That is why I chose to be on the front lines in that war. At the end of the day, my Marines – my brothers – and I did not fight for Republicans or Democrats. We did not fight for oil, and we did not fight for a man in a White House. At the end of the day, we fought and risked our lives first for the man on our right and left and to ensure that our families, our friends, and our children would live to experience the bold idea that is America. We fought to give hope and a voice to a people who had none. I have had so many of my friends sacrifice so much…some sacrificing all…defending the idea that all of us human beings – not just American citizens – are created equal and have a right to be free of oppression and injustice. The idea of America is so great – a pillar of light, hope, and strength to the world. Our great country is in a position to do more good and bring more hope in our world today than any other nation.

Sadly, we find ourselves in a situation today where America is not that shining light we were founded to be. Instead, we are seen by the greater global community as a condescending nation concerned solely with our own interests and agendas. America is a global leader, but as I learned in the Marine Corps, leadership is more about serving than anything else. It is the servant leader who, in the end, wins the hearts and minds of those around him and can move people and nations toward a better world. America needs to become a servant leader again. Sir, there are those who will tell you that service and humility are synonymous with weakness. On the contrary, I learned on the battlefield that humility is a fundamental source of strength and influence. In humility, a leader gains the confidence of those around him – inspiring them to follow him anywhere. Why? Because they know he is listening. Because they know that he cares about someone other than himself and that his compassion is not a cloak disguising hidden agendas and ulterior motives.

Mr. President, we need to become a servant leader nation again. You are indeed the leader of the free world now. I write these words to you because I know that in your heart of hearts, you are a man of compassion, humility, integrity, and hope. Hope sir. Hope is no longer a campaign slogan. Hope is now the fuel that we need you to use to restore our great nation. I bring no agenda to this letter. I am not lobbying or appealing to you for any favor of any kind. I write these words for one purpose and one purpose only…to encourage you, Mr. President. I write these words to ask you to remember who you are and why you first sought to take the office you have now assumed. You, more than anyone in recent American history, have been able to unite and move this nation. It will take a very special person and a very unique time to enable America to become a light again. You, sir, are that person, and this is that time. Over the next few months and years, you will encounter events and situations that will bring you and our nation to the breaking point. It is during those times, that we the people need you to stand in the gap and remember the ideals and the hope that got you where you are today, and be the servant leader our generation has dreamed of for so long.

Just last week, we issued a sustainable farm loan to 450 farmers in one of the most impoverished areas of Kenya in Nuru’s pilot project. The loan will change the lives of over 2,500 people in the next year by dramatically increasing their crop yields as much as 500%. The loan will give them hope. Hope and choices. The resources to make that loan happen came from our great nation. It came from Americans who heard about the injustices of extreme poverty…Americans who looked across the dinner table at their children doing their homework dreaming of their futures…Americans who realized that it was time to empower the children of global brothers and sisters to be able to dream dreams too. As I sit here writing this letter to you from the front lines in this war on extreme poverty, I think of the incredible potential that the United States of America has to bring hope to so many like the farmers here in Kuria, Kenya. Your campaign slogan brought us all hope – “Yes we can.” Now sir, it is my turn to encourage you – now is the time for the servant leader to step up and lead our nation to once again be a beacon of light, and Mr. President…yes you can. May God bless you and give you wisdom and grace to lead us.

Best Regards,

Jake Harriman

Hapana

2009-02-23T04:29:00.000-08:00

16 February 2009

Hapana is the Kiswahili word for no. Unfortunately, during my work here I have had to use that word probably more than any other word in this beautiful language.

I use the time during my daily walk to work for many purposes. It’s an hour and a half, so it’s a pretty nice chunk of time. Sometimes I use it to process through strategy for the organization or to weigh several different courses of action to implement a new project that we have come up with. Sometimes I use it to talk to God about all that’s going on in an attempt to better understand the indescribable people and situations that I come across here every day. And sometimes, like today, I just reflect about one of the many mind-blowing challenges that we are facing.

“We did this,” I think to myself as I turn the corner that I call “the corner of chaos.” Every day when I walk past there on my way to the field, I am bombarded with numerous asks…for money, food, my watch, my clothes, my backpack, whatever I’m carrying, etc. “Hapana,” I reply and walk past them quickly with a conjured look of indifference on my face.

The colonialists started it. Decades of oppression and forced “enlightenment” led to the beginnings of a culture of dependency that has only grown over time. Independence from British rule should have brought hope and prosperity to Kenya. Instead, an infant government with absolutely no idea of how to run a democracy was left behind to simply “figure it out” on their own.

Next came the world aid organizations. Fifty years of handouts have crippled sub-Saharan Africa. Many have called these efforts “Band-Aid” – a term that describes assistance to impoverished nations that is temporary at best. It refers to the very well-meaning programs that have evolved over the last fifty years to try and combat poverty here. Handouts (giving the poor aid for free) only serve to further complicate the problem. Let me be clear here when I talk about handouts and aid. I am not talking about disaster relief/humanitarian aid that is given in response to a catastrophic event such as a tsunami or mass refugee exodus caused by ethnic cleansing or civil war. I am speaking about development aid – trying to lift communities out of extreme poverty. By giving away food, money, etc. to impoverished communities, you create a crippling sense of dependency in that society that is extraordinarily difficult to recover from. One could even say that the dependency is more of a cancer on the community than the poverty itself.

So how did we end up here? It’s not as if all these organizations are determined to keep sub-Saharan Africa bound by the chains of extreme poverty. It feels good to give things away. It all comes down to being human…it’s hard to say no, and in a life filled with moments and faces of real people, it’s sometimes hard to think long-term. At a very basic level, it is very difficult to look in the eyes of an impoverished woman and refuse to give her money or food that you have an AMPLE supply of. Why not just give it to her? Here’s why… The one hundred shillings you give her will get her food for one or two days, but then what happens when she returns the next day and you are gone? This is admittedly a microscopic example of a large systemic problem, but dependency is often created in these innocent micro level exchanges in a community.

The extreme poor are an incredibly resourceful group of people of enormous potential. They are just like you and me except that they were born into circumstances that stack the deck against them. In fact, from a personal standpoint, most of the poor I have come into contact in my life have been men and women of much more potential and courage than I will ever possess. They have bravely suffered through numerous experiences in this life that would have caused me to quit and ball up whimpering in despair. What the poor need are resources and information to help them reach the first rung of the ladder on the climb out of extreme poverty – then they can climb out on their own and bring their community with them.

It’s hard for me to do that practically, though. You see, it really does feel good to give things away. There is something in us that wants to alleviate suffering immediately. It absolves something within us on a personal level…but I would propose that this is not true love. Loving another human being doesn’t mean me giving a beggar money because it makes me feel good and satisfied that I am a good person. True love is when you crawl down in that hole with the poor, sit with them in it, and then figure out a way with them to reach that bottom rung so that they can climb out of that hole for good.

It’s really hard to keep saying “hapana” to these people. Who knows if I’m actually right. The hard part about all this is that the results from standing firm and dedicating Nuru’s work to empowerment and not handouts won’t actually show for 3-5 years from now. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s worth the wait…these beautiful people are worth the wait. Here’s to lasting solutions…

fighting chronic hunger

2009-02-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

Nuru's farm loan program is a critical foothold program for us here in the community. The loan will enable farmers to become totally self-sufficient in food production for their families and increase their family income. Both of these results help win the battle against chronic hunger and malnutrition here in Kuria. This program involves Nuru purchasing high quality inputs to loan our farmers to empower them to take that first step up out of extreme poverty. Sounds pretty simple right? Wrong. This week was input issue week for our farmers - the exciting week where we distribute the fertilizer and seed. The farmers have been working tirelessly the past few weeks in training and preparation of their farms for this week. The events that transpired this week form a story that I would not have personally believed if I hadn't been a part of it and seen it for myself here on the ground. I thought I'd take a few minutes and share it with you. I apologize for the length of the post, but wow...this story just had to be told.

So in October, I began looking for suppliers for fertilizer and seed (inputs) to loan to our farmers in the program. All the suppliers' prices were astronomical, though, due to the impending global food crisis. Kenya itself is on the verge of famine. Because of that, the demand for inputs skyrocketed taking the pricepoint with it. So...that left us with the option of sourcing it from the government.

The government sells inputs to farmers through an government agency called the Cereals Board (NCPB) that has branches around the country. The branches act as depots/distributors where farmers can get inputs and also sell their maize after harvest (NCPB acts as a buyer also).

Seed prices are artificially fixed by the government, but fertilizer prices move with the global market supply and demand. Foreign aid allowed the Kenyan government to announce a fertilizer subsidy. This meant a 40% drop in fertilizer prices below the market rate. While extraordinarily helpful, the pricepoint was still well above what the farmers that we work with can afford. Enter Nuru.

We loan the farmers these inputs (fertilizer and seed) so that they can increse their crop yields dramatically (400%-500%). At harvest, the farmers repay the loan and have plenty left over to feed their families for the whole season (families currently go hungry for half of the season) and reinvest in next year's inputs without the loan. That's the general concept.

We have 450 farmers in the program...that's a lot of freakin inputs to buy up front. I had budgeted for a pricepoint slightly above market rate in 2007. With the spike in prices, though, we were way underfunded for the program. So, I had to turn to the mercy of the government's subsidy. At face value, this subsidy program is a great thing, but, as with most things here, there are complications. The subsidy has caused several problems. Rumor has it that there is currently a scandal going on where MPs (parliamentary representatives) started buying up all the subsidized fertilizer before the subsidy announcement came out to the public in order to control a large percentage of the supply. There was a ripple effect around the country as most NCPB branches began experiencing shortages in fertilizer. There were even instances were riots broke out just north of us because groups of farmers had paid for fertilizer, but when they showed up to pick it up to plant this season, it was gone.

Because of these shortages, scandals, etc., the national NCPB branch in Nairobi was trying to get ANY excuse to cancel large orders of fertilizer. Now, back to our story. When we placed our order in November, we had to submit massive amounts of paperwork documenting every farmer in the program and the amounts they would be receiving. We also had to obtain a letter from the Ministry of Agriculture stating that we were, indeed, serving farmers in the Kuria District, and not just buying the fertilizer to sell across the border in Tanzania for a profit. It took me A LONG time and NUMEROUS meetings with the ministry to get that letter. When I showed up at the Ministry for about the 4th or 5th time (mind you, I have to walk an hour to get to this place every time), I was told again that the Division Agriculture Officer (DAO) had stood me up, so, in classic "me style", I got impatient with the DAO's assistant manager, came within an inch of threatening his life, and demanded that the office stop yanking us around and write the letter. They reluctantly wrote the letter and put the DAO stamp on it. As you will see, my impatience and baffoonery came back to bite me later.

I took the letter to the NCPB and they finally allowed us to place the order - assuring me that the order would be in mid-December. We wrote a check for the equivalent of $50,000 to put a down payment on the inputs and place the order.

I went back to the States for a month to do fundraising to pay the balance on the inputs, conduct staff management and training, and a attend Board meeting - returning to Kenya on Jan 6. I returned to find that, not only was our order not filled, but they hadn't cashed the check yet (very scary because they had "an out" now if they wanted one for denying us the fertilizer we purchased).

I knew that our issue day was Feb 5, so I felt like we had some time. Philip and I went round and round with the Branch and Regional Managers of the NCPB to get the fertilzer delivered and our check cashed. After MANY meetings and phone calls, we finally got the fertilizer into the local branch of the NCPB and they cashed our check on Feb 3. Still no sign of the seed, though, so I made the decision to cancel with NCPB seed order and source a private supplier in a town 3 hours north. Jumping through massive hoops, we were able to source the seed directly with the manufacturer and get it into a holding location in the community on the 4th...ready for issue on the 5th.

I thought we were good now. Just to make sure, I had Philip go to the NCPB and physically touch and see our 800 bags of fertilizer in the warehouse. It was all there. So we finalized the plan for issue day. We ordered the trucks, and mobilized the farmers (an enormous task in itself because only about 5% have any sort of phone).

A little background...our farmers made the decision not to plant tobacco (a cash crop that had been previously harming the environment and their families' health as well as ripping them off financially). By doing so, they were literally "betting the farm" that we would be able to deliver the inputs to them and that the program will succeed. These families are starving for 25%-50% of the year, and our program provides hope that they will have food all year. To complicate matters, there is a relatively narrow window for the farmers to plant maize and get a good yield because of timing of the rains. So...they were betting everything on the hope that we could deliver these inputs on time for planting. We had trained them in proper ground preparation and planting techniques. All 450 families (approx 2,500 people) had prepared their farms and were ready to receive their inputs on Feb 5. My staff and the CDC spent hours in meetings planning and conducting detailed coordination with drivers, laborers, the NCPB, and the farmers to ensure the farmers would get their inputs which included approximately 40,000kg of DAP fertilizer and 8,000kg of maize seed. If we failed them, we would cause great harm to the farmers and their families and lose credibility and buy-in from the community - jeopardizing the whole project.

Morning of Feb 5...chaos. Our trucks showed up to pull the inputs out first thing in the morning at 7:00am. NCPB would not release the fertilizer! They said that the national NCPB branch in Nairobi had ordered them to not issue our fertilizer to us. I was already on location at one of the issue points in Taragwiti village. James, one of our Field Officers that was running the loading operation at the NCPB tried to get ahold of me to let me know what was going on, but I was in a serious cell phone dead spot in the village. He sent a runner to get word to me. When I received the message, I was FURIOUS. Nairobi was claiming that we didn't have the proper paperwork in. I immediately called the national branch. They informed me that they had canceled the order because the letter I had submitted in November from the DAO had the DAO's stamp and all of the required farmer information, but it WASN'T ON THE RIGHT LETTERHEAD! Are you kidding me????? They were looking for ANY excuse to refuse us the fertilizer. It was now 9:30am. The farmers had shown up at 9:00am ready to go. We had to go into crisis action mode.

I convinced the national branch manager to let us send him another letter on proper letterhead. The manager said that it had to be faxed immediately for approval. The DAO was in Kehancha - 30 minutes away from me. I immediately sent Philip there to talk to the DAO. After much persuasion, he convinced the DAO to write another letter - this time with the "proper" letterhead. We now had to fax the letter to Nairobi. The nearest fax machine was 45 minutes away in a town called Migori. Philip raced to Migori to fax the letter. When he got there, the machine wouldn't transmit, and we couldn't get a successful receipt message. Finally, after numerous attempts, the fax went through and Philip raced back. I called Nairobi. They said that they would now release the fertilizer. They faxed a message to the regional NCPB (because the local one didn't have a fax). The local manager also spoke with the national manager on the phone. The national manager said that in order for the local manager to release the fertilizer, he had to SEE THE AUTHORIZATION FAX WITH HIS OWN EYES!!! I just couldn't believe it. It was now 11:30am. The farmers were still waiting. The local manager had to drive the 45 minutes to Migori to read and verify the original message. When he reached there, he read the message and then called the local branch to release the fertilizer to us. FINALLY!

James got the first truck ready for loading, but the other truck was still missing. Andrew (our second Field Officer) tried to locate the other truck. It was "having mechanical problems" and wouldn't be available. Unbelievable. Andrew scrambled to find another truck that just happened to be going by empty. We hired him, and he went straight to the NCPB to load.

At the end of the day, after several other unbelievable setbacks, all the farmers received their inputs, and I was just left shaking my head in utter amazement. They will begin planting this week. It was a true miracle that the farmers received their inputs on time. Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong - even after detailed contingency planning. I was so proud of the way that the Kenyan staff went into action as everything was falling apart all around us. I am becoming more and more confident in them by the day that they will be able to completely take over and run this project very soon - and lead their people out of extreme poverty forever.

So that is how my week ended, and that is the update on the input issue to the farmers. Sorry...kind of long, but I wanted to give you the full insight into our incredible, miraculous week.

a new year of hope

2009-01-13T01:57:00.000-08:00

Well…another year is upon us. The approach of a new year always brings such a mixture of emotions in me – beginning with New Years Eve. Every year is the same…trying to figure out what party to go to or what “event” to be at – all the while holding such incredible expectations that this will be THE event of the year…that it will somehow bring a perfect end to the year. And every year – without fail – I am disappointed. There is no single event that can bring such a satisfied end to a year that has been filled so richly with the numerous ups and downs that life brings our way. I arrived at 2009 breathing a sigh of relief. 2008 was a bit of a tumultuous year – for many people. This year, New Years Eve was a bit different for me. I went back to the U.S. for a couple weeks to do some fundraising for Nuru to meet some of the critical needs that we were experiencing here on the ground. Because of this, I was able to spend the night with my whole immediate family at my brother’s place in Florida. It was a rare blessing because it is very difficult to get all of us in the same place at the same time – ever. Being surrounded by those who love me so unconditionally always puts me in a very reflective mood. For the first time in many, many months, I was able to slow down and take stock of the events that had transpired in my life and in the lives of those close to me – both at home and here in Africa.

2008 was a year of tears and triumph… I learned the joy of real love for the first time and experienced new depths of pain and loss. As I sat with my family play a board game that night, I had so many emotions and thoughts rushing through my head. This past year I have learned so much about myself and the world around me, and I have been inspired this year as never before. This past year I learned the power of hope in the searching gaze of a 10 year old boy that lives next to us here in Kenya. Hope… we throw that word around all the time, but what does it really mean? What is hope? Hope is 500 men and women risking all that they have left in this world – risking everything with absolutely no guarantee or proof of success – to see a day when their children do not writhe in pain in the throws of malaria because the dispensary is out of medicine… a day where they don’t come home to crying babies empty-handed without food or money again because their tired land failed to produce a good crop yield… a day where their 8 year old daughter can actually stay in school and eagerly learn instead of spending those precious hours walking endlessly to collect dirty, infected water for her family.

I returned to the U.S. this holiday season with a very heavy burden on my heart. We were critically short on funding for our program here in Kuria, and I had returned to secure that funding so that we could continue our work into the new year. As I stepped off the plane at SFO, I couldn’t help but feel the weight of the hopes and dreams of 3,000 brave souls bearing down on me. Such trust and faith they have innocently put in me and those working with me. All for what? For that irrational hope that has eluded the likes of me for years from the time when I set it aside to enter adulthood. I must confess that I longed to share their hope and optimism as I stepped off that plane, but the “realities” of a country in financial turmoil hit me the moment I arrived. I began to despair a bit. “How in the world am I going to do this? 500 families…” I just shook my head in silence as I waited on the curb for my buddy Grayson to pick me up. But over the next two weeks, something special occurred… I got over myself and my pre-conceived notions of self-importance, and got out of the way.

I watched my sister role the dice and cheer as she moved along the board in our game. I smiled to myself as I remembered the events that had transpired over the past two weeks. The first week had been miserable…a slew of meetings and conversations that resulted in absolutely nothing but reinforcement of my fears about raising funds in the current economic conditions. Then something happened… you happened.

to the readers of this blog…

to the many who have seen what is going on here in Kenya through the words and stories of my brave companions who are in this fight with me…

to those who looked at all they had been blessed with this past year and said, “I can get in this fight too…”

to those of you who struggled to pay the utilities month to month and yet still found a way to scrape together $50 to invest in hope…

to our family and friends, and friends of friends who truly felt in their hearts the pain of a mother walking 30 miles to get to the nearest medical facility to save her child and crying softly at mile 25 as her child breathed his last breath on her back…

to all of you I want to say…thank you.

thank you for hearing the voice of the voiceless. For answering the call to action to end the senseless suffering and sadness of those who taught me what hope is.

Because of your incredible selflessness, we exceeded our funding goal that I came home to fill. We are now able to provide the farmers our farm loan program that will increase crop yields 400% to 500% this next season – enabling them to be sure of where the next meal for their family will come from every day next season. Your gift will help bring clean, accessible water to hundreds of families…enabling those young girls to envision a life of hope and not just of questionable survival.

“5…4…3…2…1.” I listened to my brother count down to the New Year. I shook my head in amazement as I reflected on your contributions to bring hope to our friends here in Kuria – over $125,000! 2008 brought many things to my life, but one of the most rewarding was the restoration of childlike faith and hope – and it was you who helped restore that for me. You restored my hope in the ability for us to selflessly love one another regardless of differences in country, culture, or politics. I am so hopeful now going into this new year. Thank you for teaching me…for teaching me to hope again. God bless you all. Here’s to 2009…

rainy day...

2008-11-16T08:30:00.000-08:00

12 November 2008
Rain can be a pretty restoring thing…

It rains every day here like clockwork. We’re in the middle of the short rainy season. I have never seen rain like rain in the rainy season here in Kenya. It’s crazy – I’m talking Biblical deluge-type rain. One minute, the skies are a beautiful clear blue – and then the breeze begins to blow. The next thing you know, it seems like someone is throwing softball-size balls of water at you. There’s no gentle, drizzle-like introduction – it’s just WHAM! Right in the face – then the head – then…you’re soaked in a matter of seconds.

My new friends would make incredible weathermen. These guys are awesome. They can predict these monstrous rainstorms with the most unbelievable, unfailing accuracy. Of course, in the beginning, I didn’t believe them, and - as seems to be the standard for me - I had to learn the hard way (ie. get absolutely drenched while they laugh at me) to believe in that accuracy. The wind will change direction or a certain cloud will appear on the horizon, and my buddy Andrew (one of the field officers we’ve hired), will suddenly quicken his pace as we make our way across the fields on our rounds. Sure enough, we make it to the next house just in time to seek cover from the “cats and dogs.”

Rain can be a pretty restoring thing…

I had a pretty rough day today. Life can be a little overwhelming sometimes. There is so much going on every single day here - so much to think about, so much risk and small margin for error. I mean, who do I think I am meddling with people’s hopes, dreams, and, at the end of the day…lives? Today was a day fraught with self-doubt and questioning.

Today was also the first day of farmer training – the beginning of a program that we hope will be the start of a long climb out of extreme poverty for these families. We gathered in a small church with dirt floors and no doors or windows – just gaping holes in the walls. Over 400 farmers showed up for training…on time and ready to go. There was so much hope in their faces.

As I walked to training along the small trails scattered across the breathtaking landscape, my mind was swimming with insecurity and doubt: Fertilizer prices keep climbing with no end in sight – slowly eating into the dreams of these farmers right in front of my eyes – and I can’t do anything about it. Nuru’s bank account keeps getting smaller with no sizable donor in sight to step forward and fill our funding gap to get us through to our next phase of development. I have an amazing staff working with me whose contracts are about to run out – staff who have sold everything and left their old life to join me in this fight…and I have no idea how I’m going to be able to take care of them. What kind of leader is that? I still don’t have my next foundation team lined up. How will we continue the project on schedule? I have investors that have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to this venture…backing me and my ability to do this – expecting results. And, on top of everything else… today I got a really tough letter from back home that I read before coming out to the training – further reinforcing my fears of failing – of failing these amazing people who have put their trust in me; of failing the generous investors who are hoping for a new day of lasting solutions; of failing my team; of failing those who love and care about me; and finally, of failing God Himself.

As I stood up there talking to the farmers to open the training, all I could think was, “How am I going to keep from failing them? I can’t let them down.” I stepped aside and let Andrew conduct the training we had rehearsed numerous times. As the training began to end, I saw him pause, look outside, and then continue. Then I realized why he had paused…a colossal thunderstorm rolled up out of nowhere and began dumping on the little church where we were holding the training. “It totally figures,” I grumbled to myself. Andrew finished the training shouting above the deafening sound of the rain. He did such a great job. I was so proud of him. The training was over, so the farmers just settled in to wait out the storm – trying to huddle in groups at the center of the church to avoid the sheets of water blowing in through the “windows”.

I stared at the chaos outside – thinking about how closely it reflected my inner turmoil. I looked back at Andrew, “Tutaonana kesho (see you tomorrow),” I shouted above the rain. He looked at me in bewilderment. “Mr. Jake, don’t go!” he yelled. “The storm is very bad, and you must wait.” I turned back to look outside. Thunder and lightning cracked loudly overhead and the wind powerfully buffeted the walls making them creak and groan loudly under the pressure. The thoughts of the day mounted up in my head threatening to overwhelm me in emotion. “Screw it,” I said to myself. And with that, I stepped out into the chaos.

Rain can be a pretty restoring thing… Instantly, I was hit by a wall of water and I was soaked to the bone within a couple seconds. The cold of the water took my breath away. I grimaced, put my head down against the wind, and began to press forward for the hour and a half walk home.

Something happened on that walk. There’s something about feeling the full power of God’s world all around you at once (gale force winds, torrential downpour, and deafening lightning and thunder – yes, I did think about the possibility of getting struck again in case you were wondering – but I didn’t care) that enables you to just get right to it I guess. I don’t know what you believe in or what your personal faith is, but during that walk, I cried out to God to try and figure a few things out… about this project, about this organization, about this life. Those poor farmers living in the community must have thought I was insane. They kept calling out to me in their native language to get me to come in out of the storm…but I was too deep into my conversation to pay attention – to them or the storm. I shouted in anger and cried in utter frustration, but after about 45 minutes of baring my soul to God, I was spent and fell silent…listening to the river of water rushing knee-high down the road all around me and past me as I walked.

Then something happened. A peace that I have only felt one or two other times in my life came on me and I found that I could breathe again. It was as if my mind cleared, and hope slowly began to creep its way back into my mind. I stopped and looked up into the crazy shades of grey swirling in the sky above me as the water poured down over my face. And then I laughed. I was overwhelmed by a new feeling…a feeling that everything was going to be OK. A feeling that God is in control of this whole mess, and He is a good God…a God who loves life…a God who can handle the mess even when it seems too big for me…a God who loves me – even when I fail.

Did all those worries and problems just disappear and the sky clear up into that spectacular blue again?? Not at all. Fertilizer prices were still rising. Funding was still drying up. In fact, it rained and stormed on me all the way home. But I can tell you that when I arrived back at home, I was wearing a smile on my face…a smile of hope sparked by an encounter with a loving God in the rain on a long walk home.

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

2008-11-02T10:59:00.000-08:00

2 November 2008
Well, I hear that the sky is pretty much falling back home. With the investment banking industry going the way of the dodo, the Dow Jones fluctuating wildly, consumer confidence tanking, and rising food and energy prices, the current administration and the Fed seem to be left scratching their heads in utter confusion and frustration. Many Americans have been left with a growing uneasy feeling of insecurity as they watch helplessly while what once seemed to be immovable icons of security collapse like a house of cards. Security…that basic feeling that makes you feel like tomorrow is going to be OK – that everything will just work itself out – because, well…it just always does right?

I want you to look inside of yourself right now and just sit in that feeling of insecurity for a second. It’s a pretty horrible feeling isn’t it? That little voice of uncertainty that speaks fear into your mind and tells you, “What if it’s not OK? What if I’m not as safe and secure as I thought? What if I can’t depend on the people/companies/institutions/governments that I thought I could?” That feeling really sucks doesn’t it? Now imagine waking up and feeling that awful, gut-wrenching feeling…every day. Imagine that your insecurity stems – not from the question of whether or not you will be able to afford that second car or that sweet apartment you’ve been looking at in the city – but from whether or not you will be able to survive this next day. Imagine looking over at your children still asleep and praying that you will be able to scrape together enough shillings to be able to feed them just one meal to give them the strength to hang on another day.

I don’t mean to belittle the feelings of insecurity that we are all feeling from this financial crisis, but today I’d like to share with you the plight of our new friends here on the ground caused by another crisis – a crisis that darkens their hearts with that horrible feeling of insecurity every single day…the coming global food crisis the likes of which, the UN says, has not been seen in decades.

Let’s step away from the global food crisis for a second and talk about maize (corn). Maize is the staple food for much of Sub-Saharan Africa. In western Africa, it takes the form of foo-foo. In Malawi, nsima, and here in Kenya, maize flour is made into ugali. Ugali is an interesting food. Imagine taking cream of wheat and thickening it up a bit into sort of a cake…that’s ugali. I think it’s pretty much tasteless, but man…do they ever love it here! If nothing else, ugali is VERY filling. Farmers wouldn’t ever even think of stepping out that door in the morning to go to work without eating a bit of ugali…the breakfast of champions.

Like I said, ugali is made from maize flour. Almost every farmer here in Kenya grows maize to feed his/her family. There are two crop seasons here in Kenya that correspond to the two rainy seasons. Every March, farmers here plant their one or two acres in maize – hoping to be able to grow enough maize to last their families until the next rainy season in August when the can plant again. But there’s a problem. The soil here has been farmed for so long without crop rotation, that it has become drastically lacking in nitrogen and other nutrients necessary for high yields. Because of this, most farmers in our pilot community in the Kuria District produce only 2-4 bags of maize per acre each season. So what’s the problem? An average family requires six to seven bags of maize just to allow them to make it to the next season’s harvest. The low maize yield leaves these families critically short in food stores – resulting in a hunger season that lasts three to four months. During this hunger season, parents must seek ways to literally put food on the table for their children – often times trying to “stretch” the food supply by making a weak porridge out of the flour that will serve as the only meal that day. This vicious cycle results in chronic hunger and severe malnutrition in the children.

Luckily, by simply including properly utilized fertilizer as part of the planting and maintenance procedure for their crops, farmers can dramatically increase their crop yields from 2-4 bags of maize per acre to 13-15 bags/acre! An increase in crop yields such as this can mean the difference between a family losing some of their children to starvation and being able to afford to send those same children to a private secondary school where they can receive a high quality education. The solution seems so hopeful and simple. Enter the global food crisis…

The UN World Food Program stated that rapidly rising food prices has drastically increased the world’s hungry – up almost 18% since 2005. One out of every six people in the world will go to bed hungry tonight. What does that mean to our friends here in Kuria? The food crisis is causing a drastic increase in the demand for maize (a good thing) while simultaneously causing the prices of the inputs needed by the farmers (fertilizer and topdressing) to absolutely skyrocket (a very bad thing). Because of this, our farmers can’t afford to buy the fertilizer they so desperately need to be able to prevent the coming hunger season. If the farmers could just get up over this initial barrier to entry, they would be able to produce 300%-400% more maize, and they would be able to command a much higher price than usual in this current market. That’s where we come in.

Our plan is to make a loan to the farmers in the form of high quality inputs (seed, fertilizer, and topdressing) to empower them to bust through that seemingly impossible barrier to entry. This simple concept will radically change the lives of approximately 500 farm families – impacting over 2,500 individuals in our pilot community in just one short year. The increase in yield will allow the farmers to pay back the loan and have enough maize for consumption to last the entire season. In addition, the surplus can be saved to purchase the inputs next season without a loan and pay for school and medical fees – making them truly self-sufficient.

Unfortunately, the barrier has risen to become an obstacle for even us to purchase the inputs – more than doubling the cost of the agriculture program up $50,000 above what we budgeted for the program. The price of fertilizer has more than doubled in just two months here…and it continues to climb. We need to order this fertilizer NOW for these families in order to give them some hope of experiencing that elusive feeling that we call security – a feeling they have seldom, if ever, felt in their lifetimes. Right now as you read this, one investment packet of inputs for a family farming one acre of maize now costs approximately $120 – the equivalent of one third of one of these farmer’s annual income – but that number will be irrelevant when you wake up tomorrow. You and I can make a difference right now that will have a tangible, life-changing impact on real lives…real faces that I see and talk with every day here. Real people just like you and me who dream big dreams for their families and long for some sense of hope and security to replace the aching anxiety and fear that they wake up to face every day.

If this story has struck a cord with you today, I encourage you to get involved RIGHT NOW. I know that our nation is in the grip of a powerful fear right now that is breeding mass insecurity in all of our lives, but today, I ask you to set that aside for a moment…set it aside and consider the opportunity you have to make an immediate real impact to bring hope and security to another family on the other side of the world who feels and fears and loves just the same as you and I do. You can go to our website www.nuruinternational.org and make an investment in a life…forever changing them and the future of their family. Most of you know me. I hate asking for funding, but this isn’t about me. I can’t sit here and look in the eyes of these brave people and pass up this immediate opportunity to change things. This money isn’t going into some random World Bank black hole…it’s going to empower a farmer that I have shaken hands with and talked to face to face…to empower her with the tools and knowledge she needs to break the unjust vicious cycle of poverty she is trapped in. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and, more importantly, for taking ten minutes to try on the shoes of a brother or sister who has been dealing with a severe, immediate crisis every day of the last thirty or forty years of their lives…not just the last couple months. God bless.

another day...another dollar

2008-10-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

26 October 2008
A few people have asked me to describe a typical day in our life here. After thinking about it, I thought it would make for a good story, and if nothing else, bring a smile and a laugh to your heart wherever you are in your busy routine today. I had a pretty good day today, so let me tell you about it…

It all starts at about 4:30am with the loudest rooster ever known to man perching himself right outside my window and screaming into my ear. I roll over in bed and try to ignore the fire engine-like noise outside my window. At 5:30am, I finally roll out of bed and stroll into the “kitchen area.” I pour some water out of the large container of washing water I draw from a nearby well into a kettle and turn on the gas burner that rests on the dirt floor to boil the water for a “bath.” While I’m waiting for the water to boil, I try to do my little morning workout routine so that I don’t evolve into a fat slob while I’m here. Finally, the water is ready, and I head outside to the “bathing area/ outhouse” wearing a headlamp because it’s still dark out. First a trip to the “squatty potty” – yeah, I know – gross, but if you have never had the pleasure of using one of these babies, you are really missing out…oh the joy. Next for a bath. I hang up my headlamp on a rusty nail in the outhouse structure so that I can actually see my surroundings and make sure that I’m washing myself with soap and not toothpaste. I have carried the water out in a small plastic basin. Next, I squat down and just kind of begin throwing water on myself to get wet, scrub down with a bar of soap, and then try to rinse off with the remaining water in the basin (I’ve learned the hard way to make sure that I have enough water to rinse off all the soap before I leave the house). After drying off with my little REI camp towel, I stroll back into the house, get dressed, and apply the daily amount of sunscreen to avoid severe sunburn which can be caused by the malaria medication we’re taking (a lot of good that medication has done me by the way). Now I’m ready for the morning chores.

It has begun to be daylight outside, so I grab my two ten-liter water containers and head outside for my morning trek to the spring to get drinking water. The process to get a glass of clean, safe water to drink here is a bit of a hassel. First, I make this walk to the spring every morning – 10 minutes down to the spring, and 10-15 minutes back. There’s usually a line at the spring of mamas and their kids getting their morning supply of drinking water. They get a real kick out of watching this big clumsy white dude lumber down the goat path every morning to fetch water with them. These ladies are incredible. Most of them carry at least a 5 gallon bucket full of water on their heads for much, much farther than I have to – sometimes as much as 30 minutes – to get back to their house. After I fill up, I attempt to kill the 50 mosquitoes that have been swarming around my head at the spring, pick up the water, and start the trek back up the long hill. Once I get back to the house, I pour the water into this giant plastic container we keep on the dirt floor in the corner. Next, I boil a whole crapload of the water to kill parasites, bacteria, krypto, and other nasty stuff that can kill you or make you miserable. Then I pour the boiling water into a bunch of pots I set around the floor. You see, I have to wait for the water to cool before the next step. After the water cools, I pour the water into this water filter canister that filters out mud, grass, and other goodies. Lucky for me, it only takes a mere 24 HOURS to filter about 3 gallons of water. So, 24 hours later, I can open the spigot on the filter and drink a safe glass of water.

After the spring water is collected, boiled, and left to cool, the next chore is collecting washing water – water for “baths”, dishes, laundry, shaving, washing hands, etc. That water comes out of a 34 foot well behind our house. So, next I grab another 10 liter container tied to a 35 foot rope and head out back. I repeatedly lower the bucket into the well, draw out the water, and pour it into a large plastic bucket until the bucket is full. When it’s full, I carry it inside and pour it into a MUCH larger container inside that we draw from and use in the house. It usually takes four or five trips to fill it up daily (you’d be shocked at how much water the four of us use in one day).

After a yummy breakfast of toast and Nescafe instant coffee mix (mmmmmm), I’m ready to start work for the day. A lot of times there are meetings to do first, but I will skip that for now because that’s boring stuff. I grab my notes, GPS, and water, and head out the door on a little walk to the field. It takes approximately one and a half hours to walk up and down hills over busted up dirt roads and goat paths to get to the community area where we are working. The walk is great – it gives me a chance to plan out the day and sort through things in my life. I get a lot of thinking done on these morning strolls. A lot of those thoughts are ones that you end up reading about in these blog postings.

After I arrive at the link-up point (usually the local “clinic”), I settle in for the wait. Most of the people I’m meeting with are either really late or really early. Most of them don’t have watches, so they just do their best to judge the sun’s position in the sky and arrive on time. Once I meet up with my guys, we begin our work for the day. Work in the field usually involves a lot of walking. We are currently collecting data to establish a baseline from which to measure our performance here using our metrics. Basically that means that we need to meet a lot of farmers and ask them a lot of questions. We walk all over the sub-location (like a county back home) collecting data on the need of the community and loading GPS waypoints that we’re using to construct a map of the area. As I walk with my guys, we talk. We talk about their individual struggles, their ideas for development in the community, and their hopes for their families. These guys are all volunteers by the way…never asking for a single shilling even though I take them away from the farm work they need to do. They are selflessly committed to seeing their community come out of poverty. We are currently working with them in a trial period to see if they will make good candidates for the Community Development Committee. If they are chosen, they will begin receiving a meager salary from the program to enable them to work full time and still provide for their families. After we finish up (usually walking about 6-10 miles around all the various farms to talk to the farmers), I say my goodbyes and start the trek home.

Once I make it home, I log all the data from the day, do some planning and emailing to try and take care of the administrative stuff (like fundraising, bookkeeping, budgeting and financial planning, managing expat and local staff, recruiting and interviewing to maintain forward thinking and planning, strategic planning, networking with other organizations to establish partnerships, analysis of data, researching and brainstorming to develop solutions, project management, etc.) that can’t just be thrown aside unfortunately. Lucky for me, I have an incredible team that helps so much. Then it’s time to make dinner. Yes for those of you who really know me well and think that I misspoke there, I am actually the cook for the household – and miraculously no one has died.

I am not claiming that I am remotely decent, but I have a pretty sweet portfolio of dishes that I can whip up now…including beef stew, ugali, pasta with spaghetti sauce (made from scratch no less), greens, and my favorite – eggs incognito – which is basically a “mystery dish” where I just throw in a bunch of stuff with the eggs to make a sweet omelet-type dish. The cooking process is pretty funny and usually takes between one and one and a half hours because we have to make everything from scratch. Doug is an excellent sue chef. He helps me cut up everything, and his task is always making the ugali. The cool thing is everything is fresh – all the veggies straight from the field – the meat cut from the cow that day – not kidding. We bend over this little two burner “stove” that sits on the floor and is hooked up to a propane tank to cook. It’s a really awesome feeling in your lower back – I know…I’m being a baby.

We usually eat dinner by the light of a kerosene lantern. As we eat, we are continually attacked by these evil ninja bugs that we have affectionately named “dive-bombers.” The dive-bomber is an interesting (and by interesting I mean evil) bug/bee/moth thing that is similar to a wasp with a long dragon tail. These things come out at night and circle overhead endlessly as we try and eat. They wait until our guard is down, and then they literally dive headfirst into us as we are eating…bouncing off and landing on the floor. I mean these bugs are extraordinarily stupid. They just make a sport out of smashing into you and then falling onto the floor – only to be stepped on by us. I hate dive-bombers.

After dinner, Janine does the dishes – which involves a series of buckets of cold water on the dirt floor which she routinely switches out when the water gets too gross. I think she has the worst job. Then, to end the day, we usually sit down with a cup of sweet Nescafe and watch an episode of The West Wing on Doug’s Mac…a fine end to a fine day.

And that’s my typical day in a nutshell. In the process of doing the work here, I have been privileged to get to know these incredible people and their daily struggles. I’m telling you about a day in my life here, but I wish I could share one of their days with you. They are nothing short of amazing, resourceful, innovative, brave and, above all…tough. They are the reason I am here, and they continue to inspire me every day. Today was a good day. I hope you’re having a fine day as well wherever you are.

getting the word out

2008-10-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

22 October 2008
So we had a big victory today that I would like to share with all of you to give you a little “pick me up” after all the gloom and doom of lightning strikes and malaria cases. I need to give you a little backstory, though, first.

One of the hardest things to do in our work here is something called community mobilization. “Community mobilization” – now that sounds like a horrible dry and lifeless “NGO word.” In all actuality, though, it is central to anything we do in the Nuru model. Community mobilization simply means getting the word out to the community you are working with about the program or project you want to start, getting them to buy into that program, and then getting them to come and begin participating in the project. Sounds simple enough…right? Wrong. Unfortunately, this critical element in our strategy is one of the most difficult to do here in the Kuria District. Community mobilization has been and always will be a challenge for those attempting to truly partner with communities to fight poverty.

What does community mobilization look like for Nuru? Let me explain a bit. We work with groups of individuals from the community. Why groups? The individuals that struggle daily here to provide a life for their families are strong. They are survivors. But the challenges of everyday life are extraordinarily difficult and far too much for any one single individual to handle alone. When they unite together in groups, though, incredible things can happen. They begin to trust and depend on one another in a compassionate, caring way. When one member suffers, all the others come together to help meet that individual’s need. Many of the people in impoverished communities already know and embrace this model. They form women’s groups, youth groups, self-help groups – all with the aim of improving the lives of its members together as a unit. We have seen that strength, and we are tapping into that wisdom in our model. We mobilize the community through groups.

So back to the challenge of community mobilization…why is it so hard? Why is it so hard to get the word out about what Nuru wants to do in the community, get people behind it, and then get them to come and participate? Can’t we just post up a bunch of signs, call all the leaders, have a big meeting a few times, even film the meetings where we talk about the program and show it to others that couldn’t make it? No, I’m afraid it’s a bit more challenging than that. Imagine for a second the situation this community faces.

Why is it so hard to get the word out? No one has cell phones. If they do, they don’t have enough money to buy airtime (minutes) to be able to actually talk with one another to communicate. You can’t just put up posters – few of them can read or write. You can’t just go tell everyone – many of them live deep in the interior, and it would take weeks to visit every home. Then of course, you have the language barrier. Our team speaks decent Swahili, but unfortunately, many of the people in the deep interior (those who are poorest and the ones we wish to reach the most) only speak decent Swahili as well – their first language being their native tongue, Kikuria.

Why is it so hard to get people behind the program? The people of Kuria are a proud, hard-working good people, and unfortunately, they, like many other impoverished communities around the world, have been taken advantage of by both well-meaning and corrupt NGOs. You wouldn’t believe some of the ways you can destroy a person’s faith and trust in outsiders. Groups have come and gone – all making empty promises and then raping the community of its last shilling. Many of the people are fed up…it takes time to build trust and a sense of mutual respect.

Why is it so hard to just get them to come and participate? I think the best way to illustrate this challenge is through a story. During one of our initial meetings, we were explaining Nuru’s program to several leaders in the community. At the end, we asked for questions from the crowd. An elderly woman (in her early 70s) raised her hand. “Yes, mama – you have a question?” Philip asked. “Yes,” she said. “I was just wondering if you could be kind enough to hold your meetings in more than one location so that we don’t have to travel so far.” I paused – thinking what a logistical nightmare that would be. Surely she hadn’t traveled farther than 10 or 15 minutes to get to the community health center where the meeting was being held. As I began to think through all the various inconveniences we would have to go through to hold separate meetings, I was silenced as she continued. “You see,” she said. “I had to walk over two hours to get here.” These guys have no cars (only one man in the 5,000 in the community owns a car). Very few own bikes. Since she asked that question, I have begun to learn the challenges of getting around here in Kuria. It now takes me an hour and a half just to walk to work every day – over terrible, muddy roads (or goat trails) and extraordinarily rough terrain. Every time we held a meeting, this old lady would have to get up at the crack of dawn to finish a day’s work on her farm, draw water for her family for the day, fix a meal of enough food to feed her family, and then walk over two long hours up and down the hills here to a meeting to listen to some white guy talk about groups. Then afterwards, she had to walk over two hours back and hope that she could make it back by nightfall so that she doesn’t get jumped along the road. Yes, it is hard for the people to come and participate.

So, those are the challenges of community mobilization that we and the people here face. I, and others that I have worked with in the past, have faced these challenges in the past – meeting them with only meager success for a pilot project. Sometimes, I have only been able to mobilize a community to form six or seven groups of five people each to begin a program, and the program withers and dies due to lack of interest in the community. The initial response to community mobilization is very critical because from those first meetings, a project can gain momentum and continue to build exponentially in the community as others see the success of the farmers who participate – or it can die from lack of buy-in and momentum. It sets the tone for the years that follow for any project.

Today was our group formation meeting – the first test of a community’s ability to mobilize and rally around a program. It was a very big day, and I must admit that I went into the day with a lot of skepticism. So much seemed to be riding on this day. I was desperately trying to make it back in time for the meeting. I had gone to Kakamega (a town north of Kuria District) to meet with another organization that was running a farming program similar to ours. The meeting was critical to our ability to launch our own agricultural program on time, but I was nervous about making it back to the group formation meeting that was taking place in the community at 3:00pm. You might ask why I was so nervous…why if I got on the road at 6:30am at Kakamega would it ever take me 9 hours to get to the meeting? Well, that story (which included three insane matatu rides, one Subaru hatchback carrying 12 people, a few chickens, and an hour and a half race on foot to the meeting) is for another time. But as I rounded the last turn in the “road” with ten minutes to spare before the meeting, sweating profusely and breathing like I’d just hiked up K2, the sight that opened up before me stopped me in my tracks… There, in the field in front of me were 270 hard-working, dedicated people of the Kuria District – formed into groups and waiting for instruction. It was a beautiful sight. In almost all of my experiences in community development, I had never seen a group larger than eighty at an initial group meeting. These people meant business. They were not there for a hand-out. They were there to work…to join hands with the other members of their groups and lift themselves out of poverty permanently. They were tired of settling for the status quo, and they all brought a desire to begin the journey for a better life for their families.

I spoke very briefly today. Instead of listening to myself drone on endlessly, I sat and watched in awe as Philip, the chairman of the Nuru Community Development Committee, led his people in a powerful life-changing first step out of poverty. There is still so much work to be done…still so many challenges to overcome…but today was a victory. And upon that one small victory, we can build hope and trust. And from that hope and trust will form lasting solutions.

unexpected challenges

2008-10-12T03:39:00.000-07:00

12 October 2008
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about Nuru International’s work here on the ground in our pilot project in Kuria, Kenya. Already, we have seen some incredible potential for the program to really have a significant impact in the community. But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share with you the series of unbelievable events that have transpired here in the first two weeks that have acted as obstacles to our work. If we didn’t have an equally amazing set of circumstances that have served to validate our presence here, one might be inclined to think that “Somebody’s trying to tell us something.” All I can do is look back at the last two weeks and laugh quietly to myself at the comedy of events that have unfolded since day one.

Day One
After getting settled in to our house, Janine discovered that the house was plagued by black widow spiders. We spent the next couple days in full-on combat against the spiders which included a healthy ritual of bug spray, kerosene, and matches. I am pleased to say that I think we may have eradicated the little demons from the house. Doug got some great footage of the fight…stay tuned.

After we engaged in mortal combat with the spiders (I loathe spiders by the way), Janine and Nicole went to the local open air market (not to be mistaken with Safeway) to buy some vegetables and meat for dinner. Doug and I remained behind to finish setting up the satcomms for the internet. As we were finishing up, a powerful thunderstorm rolled up out of nowhere – pretty standard for this area, but this on seemed particularly powerful. We sat inside listening to the storm howl outside with torrential rains and thunder and lightning. I, being the helmet that I am, became restless and impatient at the lack of progress with the internet, sat down on the couch and opened my computer to begin tinkering with the modem and internet connection. Suddenly I couldn’t hear anything and my body felt like it was on fire. The next thing I knew, I was trying to pick myself up off the ground but I was very weak, and for some strange reason, my left leg and foot felt like they were burning. Doug and Philip were in the room with me. They were at my side trying to help me up off the ground. They were visibly shaken. I was out of breath, my heart was racing, and my body was trembling. I slowly began to piece together what had happened. I had been struck by lightning. Doug said there was an incredibly loud boom and I gave a shout as I was then blown off the couch. Apparently, lighting had come in on the wall socket, run through the powercord on my laptop, through my laptop, through me, and into the ground. Fortunately, I was wearing these old crappy Sketcher shoes that I had been wanting to throw out for a long time now. The thick rubber soles on those crappy shoes probably saved me. Doug and Philip were looking at me with very anxious looks on their faces. “Well, that’ll really wake you up in the morning!” I said with a very poor attempt at humor. But it had the desired effect. They both relaxed and laughed uneasily. Then Doug smiled. “Dude,” he said. “You’re hair looks even crazier than it normally does!”

Day Three
We had just finished cleaning up after dinner and were about to partake in one of the few “western” indulgences that we have here…watching an episode of the West Wing on Doug’s Mac. It had been a long day. We were still trying to get settled into the place, and I had been trying to coordinate the initial meetings with community leaders through our Community Development Committee (CDC) Chairman, Philip Mohochi. Philip and I had also spent most of the morning arranging for a dedicated watchman to act as security for us at night here. The watchman, an energetic young guy named Wycliff, had shown up on time that night and had posted himself in the nearby shed for duty. Everything seemed to be going fine as we settled in for a dramatic dose of American politics and the White House staff when suddenly we heard a loud commotion outside the door. It was dark, so I threw on my headlamp and ran outside. I could barely make out Wycliff wrestling on the ground with another man. I raced over to Wycliff’s aid and subdued the guy. I asked the other guys to get us some rope, and together, Wycliff and I tied the guy up as Wycliff began interrogating him in Swahili. As it turns out, the man was from Tanzania. He had snuck under the fence to try and sneak in and steal our satcomm equipment, but good old Wycliff had cut him off at the pass. Poor guy – first day on the job and he’s already having to wrestle with thieves. The police showed up about an hour later to haul the guy off bringing a close to another interesting day.

Day five
Earthquake – I’m not joking. It was mild, and no one was injured. There’s really nothing more to say on that one.

Present
And so now I write to you under the powerful grip of malaria. Yes, that’s right – I have malaria again. Fortunately, the disease hit me full bore on Friday, and I should be recovered and back to work on Monday, so it really hasn’t interfered too much with the work here. Despite my stubborn, bull-headed tendencies, I got to a public hospital quickly, and the medication is enabling a swift recovery. By the way, the hospital visit and medication cost me a grand total of $2.00 – eat your heart out Kaiser Permanente.

Oh man, all I can do is laugh. Please don’t be alarmed by any of the stuff that I have written in this posting. Everyone on the team is doing really great now – even I am on the mend from the malaria as the drugs have begun to take hold really well. I’m sure if you take a step back and look at it, you too will just shake your head and have a good laugh. Anything really worth doing is going to have obstacles along the way…so this must be REALLY worth doing. In the future, I will certainly be writing more specifically about our work here, but I think it is important to also provide you these little glimpses into our world here in an effort to really bring this place and these beautiful people to life in your hearts and minds.

fighting Goliath...

2008-10-11T00:07:00.000-07:00

9 October 2008
One of my favorite stories in the Bible is about a poor shepherd boy
slaying a trained warrior to save a kingdom. The story goes something like this…

The kingdom of Israel was in combat against a tribe of people called the Philistines. The two sides were camped across from each other in preparation for battle. As often happened in those days, a champion from the Philistine side came out to the center and challenged any man from the Israeli army to a fight to the death. Whichever man lost would effectively enslave his people to the other side, but the idea was to prevent a massive loss of life on both sides. The Philistine champion was a long-time veteran of combat named Goliath. Goliath stood nine feet tall and towered above men on both sides. Each day as the sun rose, he would come out alone to the center of the valley between the two armies and mock Israel – challenging any man among them to mortal combat…and every day, the Israelites would cower in fear – desperately trying to find a man – any man – to rise to the challenge and save their kingdom.

One day, a young boy named David was in the Israeli camp trying to find his brothers. David was a shepherd who tended his father’s sheep on their farm. His father had sent him to bring food and supplies to his three older brothers in the Israeli army, and to bring back word to his father that the brothers were doing OK. As David moved through the camp searching for his brothers early that morning, he heard a lot of commotion near the Israeli front lines as the sun rose over the mountains. He left his supplies and ventured over to see what was going on. As he had the last 39 days straight, Goliath came to the center of the valley to challenge and mock the Israeli army. A dead stillness set in. David could hear the wind whistling through the valley to meet the rising sun as the entire Israeli army stood frozen and silent in fear. There, before the army, stood the most horrifying image David had ever seen. The man, Goliath was a monstrous warrior clad in bronze armor from head to foot. He stood alone in the valley – his voice echoing off the ridgeline on both sides of the valley.

David also stood in awestruck silence and terror as he watched the man move up and down the valley. He was only a kid – a shepherd who watched his dad’s sheep. He had never seen combat – let alone a terrifying image like the bronze-covered giant below. But slowly, something began to awaken in David. A slow burning anger began to rise in his throat. Why was no one standing up to this man and stepping forward? Did Israel have no champion that could best him? No one in that whole army of thousands of trained warriors that was brave enough to step forward and save his people? No one that would step up and say, “Enough…it is time to end this. The injustice and slavery imposed by the Philistine people must end.”

“Someone must go,” he thought. “Someone must stand in that valley across from that man and tell him that his tyranny is over.” David looked down at his small hands and arms. He looked at the pouch of smooth stones on his belt and the sling wrapped across his shoulder. “But I can’t do it – all I have is this pathetic sling and a few rocks that I use to chase away wild dogs from my father’s sheep.” “Perhaps if I go, then others will follow,” he thought. David took a final look at the raving giant strutting below. He drew in a deep breath and began shaking. He could feel his heart pounding wildly in his chest. David looked to the sky as the first rays of sunlight broke over the horizon, “God, give me the strength to do this. I am small, but I know that you can use even me to end this injustice.” Quietly David stepped forward out from the line of armed men along the Israeli battle line. His lips quivered a bit as he said in a loud voice, “I will go…”

Many of you know this story, and you know what followed. David proceeded to kill the impregnable, trained, giant combat veteran with his little sling and stones. He saved his nation that day bringing an end to the injustice imposed on the land by the Philistine people.

So, why in the world am I opening this blog with an entry like this? I chose to write about this story to illustrate the power of one voice. The power that can come from one person – no matter how humble his or her beginnings…no matter how ill-equipped he or she might feel.

In our world today, one out of every six people lives in horrific, unjust poverty. One in six people will go to bed tonight with only one meal of weak porridge (if they’re lucky) in their stomach. A mother will fall asleep tonight weeping because she had to watch her four year old daughter suffer horribly under the pangs of malaria and then die on her back as she tried to carry the child to the nearest medical services 30km away – and not just one mother tonight but 3,000 mothers…and not just tonight, but every night. The statistics and facts are known by many of us, but these are not just statistics – they are real people. People just like you and I. People who are just as smart, just as capable, and just as hard-working. People with only one difference from you and I…they were born on the other side of the world.

Extreme poverty is a massive Goliath taunting and plaguing our world today – wreaking havoc on one sixth of the world’s population. The problem is so enormous…so overwhelming, that when we hear about the victims, we tend to just sigh in helpless apathy and change the channel, turn the page, or head out the door with our friends and just go about our daily routine. After all, what can one person do?

The time has come to end that sentiment. Our generation is positioned to make the most significant impact in this fight ever. The time has come to put a stake in the ground and step forward to be counted. You and I can end this thing in our lifetime. Never before in the history of the world have we had the resources and technology to be able to effect macro and micro change like we can today. Doctors, farmers, teachers, salesmen, surfers, investment bankers, students, scientists, electricians, plant workers, coal miners, CEOs, pizza delivery boys…all of us. Each one of us can make a difference in this fight. This blog is a call to battle…a call to do just that – to get in the fight. No matter what your station in life, you are uniquely gifted to be able to make a real difference.

I will be writing over the next few months about my journey to get in this fight through an organization called Nuru International. Nuru means “light” in Kiswahili, the language of the people of our pilot project in the Kuria District of Kenya. We started Nuru as a wave of change…a revolution to mobilize our generation to get in the fight. We are small, but with your help, our voice will be heard…and, more importantly, the voices of the millions struggling daily to free themselves from the chains of extreme poverty will be heard. Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you’ve read this far, it’s probably because something is stirring in your heart, and you know that you can no longer look away. I encourage you, like David, to quietly step forward today and tell the world… "I will go.” You only live once…be the change you wish to see. Be hope…be light…be nuru.