AT THE BACK OF MY MIND

Normally if a thought that worries you is at the back of your mind, it is always there although you may not spend all your time thinking about it. At the back of my mind I have always questioned the reason for the wide gap between the rich and the poor and what my role would be in bridging that gap. I have worked in various organizations, both local and international, but in those organizations leadership was just a component in day to day management. When I began to get to know Nuru, the word “leadership” also began growing at the back of my mind and I began to further understand what my role would be in helping to bridge the gap between rich and poor. 

When I got to Nuru, this big phrase, “ending extreme poverty’’ meant a lot to me and I started reflecting on my life and related it to who I am and the value I would add in Nuru towards this mission. I remember when my Grandmother would ensure that I go to school so that I could gain more knowledge. She always made sure that at all costs I would be there, and that nothing would stand in my way of working towards an education. At the back of my mind I thought, “so my Grandmother valued education even in the state of poverty she lived in,” and I realized that was her way of equipping me with the knowledge I needed to be able to get out of poverty. At Nuru, this is the role of Leadership, to equip staff with the knowledge and skills to help them run their programs effectively, and so work towards ending extreme poverty.

I began working with this program only three weeks ago but through intense introduction I have learned a lot. During this time, what has amused me so much is the servant leadership approach that Nuru takes. I have realized that this concept is missing in many organizations. Mostly leaders are used to having their offices well cleaned and arranged, served meals first among others contrary to the servant leadership approach. I have learned that this is the best approach to be a servant leader, which in my view is more of a mentorship, being a role model and doing for others to see and practice.

The aspect of sustainability is another interesting area which I have desired to work on and see a sustainable community initiated program. What Nuru is working towards is in line with this very thing. Many programs are donor-driven hence are challenged on sustainability issues after donors pull out. All programs at Nuru are geared towards sustainability but it is the Leadership Program that drives the importance of sustainability through staff management. The role of the Leadership Program is to train the staff with the goal of building their capacity to perform and be competent and productive in their respective program areas.

The Nuru Leadership Program is a rare strategy used in organizations as a way to ensure management sustainability, but it is one that is very important. So as I think back on that original question that is at the back of my mind, I have realized that working as part of the Leadership Program is my role to answer that question. 

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These original ideas have been reinforced through our work with our teams in Kenya. We have continued to refine these strategies and have begun to use them with the new project in Ethiopia. It is a unique approach because if we do what we are claiming, our local leaders will define and own the programs and the Western staff needs to hold their programs more loosely than the traditional development worker. It can also be risky because though backed by sound theory there are few organizations that practically do interventions in this way. Though perhaps that is why many nations have been mired in poverty for so long. We recognize how important this approach is and believe the world does not need another organization that gives shoes or shirts away to those living in poverty or one that builds empty schools or hospitals.

Fortunately we are not alone in fighting poverty in this way. A recent article in the Guardian titled, “Building communities: how poor people are unlocking their own potential” discuss Rural Support Programmes in India and Pakistan that work in a similar fashion.  The article describes their successes as shown by the following excerpts:

The RSP philosophy of community self-help works because it doesn’t impose preset development plans from above. No amount of central planning can accommodate the countless variations at grassroots level, and the approach creates the space for poor communities to play an active role in their own development…

A 1998 UN Development Programme evaluation of RSPs said: “The model is unique. It is highly responsive to community motives and aspirations within the context of community participation … [and makes it] feasible to unlock the productive and entrepreneurial potential of Pakistan’s rural people.”

The larger impact by working at the grassroots level is obviously great and a big reason why we do this work but I am also impassioned by the treatment of those we are working with who are living in poverty. I do not want them to feel like they are passive recipients of handouts without ever believing they can set their own course for their lives and their future. I have looked into the eyes of enough marginalized people to know the harm that belief does to their humanity and our humanity as well. I echo the words of Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of Acumen Fund, who recently wrote a beautiful piece that captures what I believe is the heart of the Leadership Program. She described a visit with d.light to Central Kenya and a discussion David Small, the head of d.light Africa, had with one of d.light’s customers, Teresia. From, “Dignity, Not Dependence While Living Under $1 a Day”:

This is why I am doing this work. This is why I started Acumen: I am witnessing a conversation of equals, one between an empowered consumer and a businessman trying to serve her. Teresia is not pandering nor is she begging. David is neither self-satisfied with his own sense of benevolence, nor is he assuming he has the answers. Teresia may have next to nothing of material value in the world, but here she is, full of dignity, full of the confidence that comes with doing something for yourself and paying for it, to boot. Her eyes sparkle with curiosity and strength. Teresia has earned this conversation. David must continue to work for her loyalty and trust as a customer. In the process, both have the chance to be transformed.

This is the type of relationship the Leadership Program is trying to promote and one that we believe will bring the greatest impact that will last. One where our expatriate staff is humble enough to know they do not have all the answers and do not have any misconceptions about their “benevolent service” working with local communities and leaders who are full of dignity and who are able to make meaningful choices for themselves and their families.

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As we embark on teaching Basic Nuru Leadership Training (BNLT), we have instituted a pre and post test. The idea behind this is that participants will take the same assessment at the beginning of class, before they have actually learned anything about the topic, and then again at the end of class after our team has taught all of our lessons. These two sets of scores will help us to understand how much knowledge each person came in with and exactly how much each participant learned in our trainings. They will be able to show us an immediate impact about how our classes directly contribute to an increase in knowledge in each participant. This is important data for us to have for a variety of reasons. It can help us improve our teaching methods, evaluate our curriculum, and see where there may be gaps in our teaching. More importantly, it can also help us to prove that our trainings have had a direct impact on Nuru staff, which in turn should have a direct impact on their work performance.

We are also at the beginning stages of instituting oral assessments for select participants. In our classes there are some individuals that struggle with reading and writing and this can often make sitting down to take our written assessments a very stressful and difficult experience. As a place to start with instituting oral assessments, we have identified one individual known to struggle with literacy. Instead of taking a written assessment, that he most likely would not be able to complete, we took a different approach and decided to ask him the assessment questions orally instead. Due to the opportunity to take oral assessments, on both our Feedback and Focus Project One (FP1) trainings, he scored upwards of 70%, well above our standard 60% pass mark. This is revolutionary for our program. It is entirely possible that our impact is much larger than we are actually able to show right now, simply due to the fact that in the past our assessments had all been written instead of oral. It is incredibly exciting to know that with this one shift, it is possible for individuals to gain confidence as they perform better, and also for our program to gain accurate data of our impact.

We are continually reflecting on the idea of measuring Leadership and often work closely in conjunction with Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) in order to hone our methods and brainstorm new ones as well. As the program grows, our methods of measurement will also undoubtedly grow and improve. In the meantime we have the Staff Leadership Review, pre and post assessments, and also portions of performance reviews in which to gather data about our program. The picture of Leadership’s impact is slowly coming to realization and it is shaping up to be very positive.

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Other than working on preparing for and teaching Focus Project One, the Leadership team has been busy working with Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) to develop new measurement tools for our program. We have collaborated together to create the “Staff Leadership Review,” which will allow the Leadership program to assess the application component of our trainings. As of now, after each training, staff members take an assessment which helps us to measure how much they have learned in that given series. However, even if someone scores 100%, it can be difficult for us to determine if that staff member is actually applying the concepts they learn from our lessons to their daily work-lives. The Staff Leadership Review, which will be filled out by managers about their down-lines, affords us with a more concrete and trackable way to assess, measure, and quantify the application component of our trainings. Leadership and M&E will hold a joint meeting to train District Managers and Program Managers on how to fill out the Staff Leadership Review this week, so we are looking forward to collecting that data in the near future.

We have also welcomed two new Field Managers to our program and are currently in the process of hiring a District Manager. I am happy to say that our new FMs come to us with very solid teaching experience and they have already excelled at working with the team and facilitating lessons. Our next step in Leadership is to begin practicing and preparing for Basic Nuru Leadership Training (BNLT) which we will begin to teach in mid-March.

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Secondly, as mentioned in the last blog, with the start of the New Year, also brings the start of a new schedule. Our training structure has shifted from half days for 6-8 weeks, to full days in which each training will now be completed in one week. Our goal with this new schedule is to make attending trainings more convenient for each program, to make the information easier to obtain and digest for participants, and to provide an increased number of trainings throughout the year. Our first training series, Focus Project One, will begin in February and we are excited to have the new Field Managers involved. It will be great to see them interact with the rest of the Leadership team as they work together to prepare materials and teach lessons. I am confident that they will create a dynamic and exciting classroom environment alongside our veteran Field Managers.

Coming back into the project with fresh eyes has also helped me to gain more perspective on the skills of the Leadership team. For example, in the short time I have been back, I am continually amazed at their improvement in computer skills. When I first arrived in Kenya, the team struggled with basic computer programs such as Microsoft Word and Excel. At this point, almost all of the Leadership team can now successfully navigate the Dropbox folder, where most of our curriculum is stored, and nearly all of them can correctly type and format lessons in Microsoft Word. One of our Zone Managers is also especially skilled in Excel and has the ability to create and format new documents, as well as utilize equations to assist us in determining assessment percentages and average scores. Computer skills may seem like something that is a given or assumed, but here in Kuria West, the skills that the Leadership team have been able to build in the last six months is nothing short of impressive and I know with practice they will only continue to improve.

While there is still room to grow, it is important to stop and celebrate the small successes. The team has improved immensely in the last six months in a variety of areas such as facilitation, curriculum writing, and weekly planning skills. Each member of the team has made great personal and professional strides that have contributed to their success at Nuru and I look forward to seeing this continue in the coming months.

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Another important change that will happen next year is the professional development of Leadership Field Managers. Originally hired to solely practice and deliver trainings, the team has decided that it is important to bring Field Managers into other activities that happen in our program—most importantly, curriculum writing. In the new year, the Leadership District Managers will hold a series of trainings for our Field Managers to help equip them with the knowledge and skills necessary to write and edit Leadership curriculum. As our program grows, it will be necessary for the Field Managers to take on added responsibilities, and teaching them how to write curriculum is merely the first step in the process of their professional development and growth at Nuru.

We have big plans ahead of us for 2013 and look forward to sharing all of our exciting developments as they happen here in Kuria, West.  In the meantime, enjoy the holidays!

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Here at Leadership, we are gearing up to teach our next training series. Making edits to our curriculum, translating key points, and putting together classroom materials, we are well on our way to begin teaching Nuru Field Officers about the importance of feedback. Feedback is a vital aspect of life here at Nuru Kenya and it is an especially significant part of leadership’s daily routine. We provide feedback to each other after every lesson we teach, leadership managers provide feedback to their employees once a week, and we also continuously solicit feedback from other staff members about how our trainings are conducted and scheduled. But it’s not only in leadership where feedback is emphasized, all Nuru employees must also give and receive feedback on bi-annual performance evaluations, and many other programs institute feedback after important trainings or meetings as well.

Given that feedback is so instrumental to the working environment here, it is crucial that all Nuru staff are equipped with the tools, knowledge, and skills to enable them to give and receive it successfully. Yet in Kenya, giving feedback is often fear-inducing and can cause a significant amount of anxiety. The risks of giving and receiving feedback are high and can include fear of losing one’s job, losing respect from other employees or friends, and potentially losing promotion opportunities. However, it is the risks of not giving and receiving feedback that rather create a more negative outcome. This includes failure to grow as a person and leader, failure to reach a goal, frustration, anxiety, and an increase in poverty and corruption. Without giving and receiving feedback, employees stay stagnant and are not able to identify how they can grow and improve.

In order to mitigate these challenges, the Leadership Team teaches Nuru staff about the benefits of feedback and works to create a culture in which feedback is a positive rather than negative experience. Even with this effort, the process of feedback is not without its challenges. Many staff members are still reluctant to give the leadership team feedback after lessons and at times they still fear giving feedback to other employees on performance evaluations. However, training Nuru staff on this topic helps to eliminate some of these challenges and the leadership team’s constant nurturing and openness about receiving positive input and constructive criticism also works to encourage staff members to feel comfortable with participating in the process of feedback. Every day there is improvement on the staff’s willingness to provide open, honest, and effective feedback and as the leadership team embarks on formally instructing staff about this topic, it is a certainty that giving and receiving feedback among Nuru staff will only continue to progress.

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Given these positive outcomes and challenges, and also that this was the first time leadership Field Managers taught this training series, the leadership staff had incredibly valuable insights about what went well and what could be improved for the future. For a glimpse of our discussion, read the excerpt below as the leadership staff thinks critically about the definition of scaling:

Vincent (FM): There is a contradiction between what the definition is. Someone will say that it is increasing and expanding, but we see that this doesn’t accurately portray the meaning of the word scaling. Increasing and expanding shows how Nuru scales but doesn’t necessarily define the word. The meaning of scaling doesn’t come out until we do the [cups] activity. They understand when we do the demonstration.

Francis (DM): To me scaling is the process of increasing and expanding, and this is a Nuru definition. If you try to go literally into the definition, you might get confused. But this definition is according to Nuru.

Paul (DM): It’s like extreme poverty; if you define it according to the dictionaries it is different than how Nuru defines it. Scaling is the increasing and expanding of what? Scaling is the process of expanding and scaling to new areas.

Gisiri (FM): But you are using the same word to describe the same word.

Vincent (FM): According to the demonstration [in the lesson], we see that scaling is the way that Nuru moves to new areas and if that’s the case we need them to know that scaling means moving from one place to another by increasing and expanding. We should make it a new definition.

In culmination of this discussion, the leadership team came up with a new definition of scaling which more accurately represents the concept in the context of Nuru. Just a snapshot of our discussions about BNLT, this excerpt clearly shows the insight that the leadership staff has about our curriculum. They are constantly looking for ways to improve what we teach and make sure that the concepts will be understood by all levels of staff, from Field Officers to District Managers. As a result of excellent insight and strong critical thinking skills, leadership curriculum and scheduling continues to improve and make positive impacts in all of Nuru.

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-Response from a Nuru staff member about what they learned during BNLT

For the past three weeks, the leadership team has been training over 120 of Nuru’s staff for our week-long training series called Basic Nuru Leadership Training, or BNLT. Primarily focusing on the tenants of servant leadership, BNLT also explores such concepts as bottom-up versus top-down development, what it means for Nuru to be an integrated model, how Nuru scales, and why sustainability is important.

With interactive lessons based on learning through experiences, the response from participants has been overwhelmingly positive and many of them have already begun implementing the concepts they learned into their daily lives and work. One staff member working with the Income Generating Activities (IGA) program did a research report that included the importance of servant leadership and how both IGA and leadership contribute significantly to Nuru’s sustainability—information which he learned directly from the BNLT training.

Many of the other sessions of BNLT also clearly indicate that participants are not only understanding important concepts but are also using them in their daily lives. In Kehancha Division, during a lesson that focused on a leader’s place in the community and the importance of being humble and together with your people, a lively discussion arose about a very specific kind of community leader. Many of the participants in the class were pastors and had a specific idea about what their role as leaders should be. They argued that during special church events pastors should eat at a separate table and be given different food than the congregation. This means that while the pastors might take popular local favorites like ugali, chicken, and stew, regular church goers would instead be served something simpler, like chapati and beans. The class was divided between those who believed pastors should eat separately with better food, and those who thought it was right for the pastors to sit with the congregation and consume the same food as the rest of the people. Using the leadership lesson as a vehicle to talk about this issue, participants engaged in a heated but friendly debate, all eventually coming to the conclusion that pastors should not be given special privileges or better food than the rest of the church goers, and that instead of eating separately, they should be eating together with their people. The pastors in the class even made the promise that they would change their behavior in their respective churches—that they will now always eat together with their congregation, and not take advantage of the special perks their position may provide them.

Both of these examples illustrate just why leadership and the trainings we provide are so important to both Nuru and the community at large. Frequently the Leadership Program is thought of as a long-term investment; we are working to create strong, humble leaders, but that does not happen overnight. Yet, these small strides clearly indicate that we are not just building long-term leaders but we are helping to create an immediate change and positive impact within Nuru and the greater community right now. The fact that after our training a number of Nuru staff have already begun to implement the concepts from the BNLT lessons, both at their jobs and in their daily lives, is a testament to the importance and effectiveness of the Leadership Program.  In the past three weeks of BNLT, the philosophies of Nuru have gone from concepts to reality— and the reality is that the leadership team is making a real impact, in very real ways, in the real lives of the people we work with.

Nuru staff experiencing what it feels like to be a leader.

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As Thomas said, my name is Jennifer and I hail from Ann Arbor, Michigan.  I hold a BA from Michigan State University in English and African studies, and an MA from Indiana University in African Studies.  Having spent the last few years of my life studying, conducting research, and living in West Africa, I am extremely excited to join the Kenyan team here in Kuria to help create meaningful choices for the community, improve the quality of life, and work to eliminate extreme poverty in a locally owned and sustainable way.

From the moment I first met my team on a Skype call about five months ago, I felt incredibly lucky to be able to know this group of people.  Now that I am in Kenya, on any given day I hear comments from the other program managers, wondering why they are always hearing laughter coming from the leadership office.  Really, it’s just a typical day at the Regional Training Center, collaborating with a group of hard working people that love to smile, laugh, and make a joke about almost anything.

This team is one that gets things done, on time, even early, but still carves out a space to bond, share stories, and laugh with one another.  It’s a team that stays after working hours and is continually concerned with the well-being of others.  It is filled with exemplary servant leaders who will literally wait to be served food last in a crowd of over 120 people.  The leadership team will help pave the way forward for Nuru leaders as they take over programs, build a renewed sense of agency, and help others gain the problem solving abilities to navigate through tough challenges that will undoubtedly present themselves as Nuru continues to grow.  This team is one that I am proud to say I am now a part of.

Every day I am continually impressed with the initiative, attitude, and aptitude of the leadership staff.  In the short time I have been here, I have already had the opportunity to observe some of our recently hired staff improve and grow as facilitators and Nuru leaders.  Although I am certain that my rotation will not be without challenges, I am confident that in the coming year the leadership team will continue to make great strides as facilitators, writers of curriculum, and well-respected role models of servant leadership.  It is an incredible privilege to be able to work alongside the Kenyan staff with the common goal of ending extreme poverty in sustainable, holistic, and locally relevant ways.  I look forward to continuing to provide updates about the leadership team, our program, and life here at Nuru Kenya.  Until next month, enjoy this photograph of our three District Managers as they work hard on writing curriculum.

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