An EPIC trip to Nairobi & Mbirkani!

My notes from the three days of field visits & learnings across Nairobi & Mbirkani.?

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CFK Africa – Homepage | Driving progress in informal and peri-urban settlements | CFK Africa (started in 2000)

Started as Carolina for Kibera (one of the co-founders was a student at the University of North Carolina - what a way of honouring your alma mater) and now renamed CFK Africa – this is an NGO which works in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Nairobi. ??For someone coming from India, & sadly a bit immune to seeing poverty, it was eye opening even for me to see this level of poverty.?? For an Indian context, think the slums in Dharavi in Mumbai, 10yrs ago but much much poorer.?? CFK works in the local Kibera community to improve health outcomes and livelihoods.?? During the visit with Jeffrey Okoro , Beth Ann Kutchma , & various other CFK folks, we walked through the slums (informal dwellings) & visited the work that they do in the local community.??

We met with various teams of doctors led by Dr. Dennis Kinoti that volunteer at their maternity clinic visited their youth centre, where they provide ICT training, but also mental health and sexual health counselling, a big issue in these areas due to the high prevalence of gender-based violence.?? The number of 13-16 year pregnant girls is simply astonishing even more so because abortion is illegal in Kenya.?? Local illegal doctors (quacks) are where the girls go to in the first instance and then come to the clinics for ongoing care.?? Girls from the age of 14 are sexually active (in some cases forced due to general based violence), and the clinic works in the local community as a safe place for girls.?? The counsellor said that in many cases, the pregnant girls are ashamed even to tell their parents and so they tell the counsellors who break it slowly to the parents and support these young girls and mothers.?? The ICT centre colocation is strategic as the girls prefer their anonymity.?? Some girls go onto become teenage mothers and we met a couple of volunteers who themselves were teenage moms and now are counsellors who speak to the girls to educate them from their own experiences.?? Our guide was a nurse and the daughter of one of the co-founders – Tabitha – who was a nurse who also co-founded CFK.???? CFK also provides scholarships to kids in the area + works hard on sports facilities like football to integrate with the community.? While walking around (we walked for 3hrs visiting the various facilities around Kibera) it was incredible to see the kids come out of school all bouncing footballs on their way home with my joy!?? There is also a girl’s football league (the first) which has been promoted and put into place by CFK (for which it was recognized by the Gates foundation).?

?Next, we visited a local house in the slums to see the work that the community outreach personnel carry out.? The lady had just had triplets three months ago & we saw her trying to manage them all by herself.? 5 of us huddled into her home while she talked about how she was deeply depressed after the birth of her triplets as it came as a complete shock and how she had no idea how to take care of them and her husband ran away out of shock, leaving her + her older one + the three new babies in her care.? Cfk volunteers helped her during this period with nutrition for the kids + they and the local pastor searched for and found her husband and convinced him to come back.? She is still depressed by the enormity of it all but knows that she has to move forward for the sake of her children.??? The way the CFK volunteer accompanying us held one of the babies, it was clear she was a second mum to these babies.?

Next stop was an entrepreneurial centre supported by CFK.? Here they have given tools to a group of local artisans to make beads and other ornaments.?? The artisans also talked about how much CFK supported the local community.??? An interesting observation was that it was interesting to see during our tour, how idle the men were and how industrious the women were.? Everywhere we looked, women were working, while men sat mostly idle.?? ?Unemployment remains a big problem in Kenya and the CFK volunteer mentioned that when they advertise for 1 (paid) position they get over 600 applications from the community.???? Last stop for us was back to the CFK office where we met with various volunteers and scholarship students who all had a tough story to tell of their childhood (childhood abuse, teenage pregnancies and HIV infections).? The world is indeed a sad place but also so inspiring to see what various volunteers both from local communities as well as international aid workers are doing here in Kibera.? ?

What struck me the most was how ?well meshed with the local community the CFK folks were - doing great work but with lots more needing to be done.??

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On Day 2 – we flew to Mbirkani (45mins flight from Nairobi).???? Plan for the day was to spend time with

Justdiggit | Cooling Down The Planet | Global Warming Charity & couple of other NGOs that work closely with them in the local community

?o?? Biglife Big Life Foundation - HOME

?o?? Amboselli Ecosystem Trust (AET) Amboseli Ecosystem Trust – Ecosystem Conservation

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All these works are on the climate change and natural conservation side.? ??Their work is super simple – they focus on conservation and regeneration of the grasslands which ultimately works towards cooling the planet.? ??Due to population growth + livestock growth + wildlife losing natural habitats a lot of the natural green cover of Africa has been destroyed.? This has caused huge issues for the local communities and these NGOs are working to alleviate this.?? Simple ideas reminded us again, there is a lot more to impactful innovation then just another fast new semiconductor chip!

?Big life started in 2010 as an anti-poaching NGO and that remains its primary mission.? Their head of security Craig Millar explained that they have been super successful in the area with interventions such as working with law enforcement, funding private rangers to control the ivory trade such that over the last 3yrs – there hasn’t been a single poaching incident in the areas they cover.? They work closely with the local communities with incentivises for any intelligence on poachers.?? Just like successful pivots and addressing natural adjacencies in the start up world, over time, they have evolved their mission to include habitat protection & managing human wild life conflict.?? They also provide scholarships to local students to train and work as gamekeepers and have given over 1500 scholarships.? One of the things they realized was that while 50% of elephants were poached the other 50% were killed by locals as they strayed in human/Masai territory.??? ?Elephants were finding their habitats eroded due to the soil erosion and were travelling further and further for food.??

?Because of rapidly expanding human settlements, elephants were having to cross human areas and we learnt that when they are not allowed to roam freely and are enclosed they tend to react badly and destroy whatever was in their path.? Elephants are effectively the honeybees of the natural tree ecosystem and their conservation touches many lives.??? Consequently Big Life have taken a more wholistic approach to a) regenerate the land with interventions such as what justdigit offers b) work directly with local communities ?to educate c) set up a compensation fund (Predator Compensation Fund) to compensate local farmers when their land/livestock is destroyed by elephants d) create pathways and crossings for elephants to cross through the reserves.? Of the 100k hectares that the elephants roam on only 20k is national parks – the balance is private land – but this is all open/conservation/livestock area where wildlife is allowed to roam freely.? ?

Their website has a lot more details + their presentation on the success of anti-poaching is great study in the impact of a local approach with global implications.??

Justdigit as the name suggests, works with local partners (like Big Life) to rain water harvest and re-green the grass lands.?? They do this by incentivizing local women to dig small half moon bunds which collect rain water and are then seeded with grass seeds to recreate the grasslands and replenish the underground aquifers.? Amazingly simple concept as explained by Marjolien and Ronald and it works.?

They have dug over 450k of these small half moon bunds with over 40k done this year itself.??? The results appear within 3 months of the rain.??

They work with the local communities to incentivize the local women to dig + seed farm creating their own cycle of sustainability.???

Again, it was interesting to observe the woman led economy at work.?? Local women engaged in digging the bunds, tree planation + also grass seeding.??? During the course of the day, we spent some time talking to these farm collectives (all run by women) who talked about their entrepreneurial journeys and how the reforestation and regeneration of land had not only decreased conflict but also given them a very strong means of additional livelihood (v/s the bead making that generally employs most of them).??

Justdigit’s work is very small scale but real impact can be seen in a short period of time.?? The grasslands are seeing regeneration, the elephants + livestock are much happier and there is sustainable entrepreneurship at work in the area – Marjolien (Just Digit CEO) was hugged & thanked profusely by everyone she met (last two years were poor rain so it seemed like things were not working, but she and Justdigit kept the faith and this year, because of the rains, it has been a bumper year for the collective).?

Another idea, where product market fit is there and now it’s a question of scaling.?? These NGOs are also very early in their cycle and are just now thinking about the fact that a lot of the work they are doing can be utilized for gaining carbon credits and becoming self funding in that respect.?

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Kidogo - Kidogo: Unlocking Potential Through Quality Childcare

?The last NGO we visited was Kidogo.? Kidogo is a provider of child care services for children aged 0-5 living in these informal housing (slums).?? It was founded by Sabrina Habib who along with Munanie (Franciscah) Nzanga , Kidogo's COO lead us through the visits.??? We started the journey with a visit to a non-kidogo nursery.?? This was to get a sense of what childcare really looks like in these informal housing units before Kidogo’s intervention.?? The unit was a small centre (less than the size of a bedroom), with about 19 children sitting on two long desks in small chairs, no lights,?with lots of crates stacked against the wall.??

However probably the loudest takeaway was the silence.? There was not a peep from these 2-4 year olds.? They were just quiet.??

Sabrina told us that women who have kids, have three options to go back to work, a) either leave them alone at home b) left with a relative or at an informal centre c) child’s older siblings pulled out of school to take care of the child.?? All these options are sub-optimal.? ??To optimize for this and given the scale of the problem, she started Kidogo as a franchise network where on joining Kidogo spends about US$250 to improve the facility (either at home, school or a separate rented facility).?

They provide training to the mamapreneurs (this should be a proper English word) – things like let the kids play, how they should play with home grown toys, sit on the carpet with them at their level and play with them, nutritional support, cleanliness, health and hygiene etc.??

In her words, this creates a triple unlock? a) the child gets a great facility to grow – 80% of brain development happens in the first 5yrs and this has huge long term impact b) the mother gets to go to work at peace and support her family c) the mamaprenuer – learns how to run & treat this as a proper business.????

When we visited actual kidogo facilities we could see the actual impact of this.?? Small changes but the kids were happy, loud and willing to converse and play.?? We also met with many of the mamaprenuers who talked about how Kidogo had changed their lives by a) giving them respect in the community as a teacher b) making it an actual business c) all of them wanted to grow more and add two three more centers in a few years d) enabled them to send their own kids to schools and higher education.???

Kiddogo is a classic VC style NGO play – where the product market fit has been found, they are already at 38k kids, with over 1500 centres and growing fast – making them Kenya’s largest daycare facility in the vulnerable space and now need support to spread their message.?? The best part about Kidogo’s intervention, was that if donor funding dries up (unlikely), Kidogo would close but the mamaprenuers would continue their service having learnt the techniques – which in my mind is the true test of a great NGO business model as in some cases, true success lies in becoming irrelevant as the problem has been solved!

PS: There was no time to do a safari but did spy some wildlife on the road on our drive through Ambrosia! Need to return again to do the other 4 out 5.

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Special thanks to the entire EPIC Foundation team Alexandre MARS , Myriam Vander Elst , Diane, Sophie, Robbie Macmillan , Quitterie Hersart de La Villemarqué ) for the generous hospitality, superb organization & all the energy over the 3 days and all the leadership from all the NGOs (Beth Ann, Jeffery, Craig, Sabrina, Ronald, Marjolien, Franciscah) & their fantastic teams for taking the time to educate all of us with so much patience and optimism.?

Asante Sana! ???

Notes + all the mistakes & omissions all my own!