Nuru International was founded by Jake Harriman, a former Special Operations Platoon Commander with the U.S. Marines. After fighting the war on terror around the world, Jake became convinced that the only way to end terrorism is to end extreme poverty. He left the Marines and enrolled at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business to create an organization to end extreme poverty.
Nuru works amongst the rural poor in the developing world. We’re currently working in Kuria, Kenya, and it is from the local language that we got our name: Nuru is a Kiswahili word meaning light.
When Nuru was invited into the community, we mobilized the local farmers into groups. We then trained local leaders using an innovative leadership development model that equips the poor to become the answers to their own problems.
Next we employed design thinking to understand the specific needs of the community and created innovative solutions together with the community to meet those needs.
However, we don't claim to know all the answers. That's why we have our own Research Team to search out and compile innovative and effective practices used by top organizations around the world facing similar challenges.
Nuru partners with those organizations, inviting them into our project to apply their expertise in Nuru’s 5 program areas: Agriculture, Water & Sanitation, Healthcare, Education, and Community Economic Development. Nuru then facilitates the project as a general contractor of NGOs.
The end result: each individual organization’s impact is multiplied far beyond what could have been achieved in isolation, and eliminating duplication of effort brings rapid results at a much lower cost.
During the implementation phase, Nuru generates revenues in all 5 program areas, eventually allowing the project to be fully financially sustainable and independent of outside funding.
Once that is achieved, Western Nuru staff will exit the project, empowering the trained local Nuru staff to duplicate the model in neighboring communities.
This is holistic integrated development that is sustainable and scalable.
Nuru International is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, public benefit charity committed to pioneering holistic, sustainable solutions to end extreme poverty in partnership with the poor.
