September 2005 Newsletter

Newsletter September 2005

• Message from Martin
• Help KickStart Win $1 Million
• The Human Face of our Work – Stories of KickStart Families
• The Path to the Future
• Nick Moon’s Invitation to Visit

A Message from Martin—
Jambo! (Greetings, in Swahili)

I have just returned from a month in Africa, feeling more committed and more excited about KickStart’s work than ever. I have also come home feeling more hopeful about the future of Africa and her people. “Hopeful” is not a word most people use to describe Africa, but we have good reason to feel positive about the years to come.

During my trip, I took some guests from America and Europe to visit some of the families using our pumps. I know we often talk of numbers and “impacts” but I’d like to introduce you to two couples, Francis and Milkha, and Solome and Gitiri. These are just two of the thousands of families using our pumps to improve their lives. These families are extraordinary, and yet, they are also like millions of other families across Africa. They don’t want pity. They don’t want handouts. They envision a better future for their children. They just need a little help to get started. You can read about our visit in this issue.

This brings me to the other reason why I’m so hopeful about the future. Thanks to the Flora Family Foundation, we were able to hold a KickStart management retreat to put some legs on a plan to get another 400,000 people out of poverty. You can read more about that here as well.

I hope you enjoy this update. Thank you for your support.
—Martin

Contribute by September 30 and Help Us Win a $1 Million Grant

The Amazon.com Nonprofit Innovation Award closes on September 30. Ten organizations – including KickStart – are competing to generate the most contributions by September 30, 2005 for the chance to have their contributions matched by Amazon.com up to $1 million.

It was a great honor to be chosen for the competition from over one thousand entries. Donations will be directed to KickStart regardless of whether Amazon matches the funds we have been able to raise during the competition.

You can make a gift online. Go to www.kickstart.org/donate and click on the Amazon link.

If you are one of the hundreds of people who have already given—Asante Sana (thank you very much!). If you have not given yet, please do and tell your friends—every contribution helps.

Contributions can be a maximum of $1,000. KickStart employees, Board members, and family members of employees are not allowed to give toward this award (but you can tell others!).

Of course, we are also seeking larger donations to support the growth of our program. And we hope that some of you will decide to join us at a higher contribution level – with the knowledge that every $1,000 of your gift will not only help us grow our program to the next level but will also lift another 4 families—like the ones you will meet here—out of poverty forever. If you’d like more information on our programs or how to make a gift, please contact our Director of Development.

KickStart Makes a Difference in the Lives of Two Kenyan Families

In August 2005, we visited two families using our pumps in Kenya. Regina Kamau, a member of KickStart’s Impact Monitoring staff has become very close with both families and arranged our visits.

We drove north from Nairobi on a paved road for about forty-five minutes before we took the exit for Kagunduini in the Maragua District of Central Kenya. A few yards from the interchange, the pavement ended and immediately became a rutted dirt trail. To call it a road would be an overstatement, but in Kenya this is considered one of the better thoroughfares. Fortunately our driver, Vincent, was skilled at navigating our rattling KickStart minivan through and around axle-busting trenches and potholes.

With the exception of the two small villages, there was little settlement visible from the road, yet it was crowded with people—children in school uniforms, men driving donkey carts, women contorted like question marks carrying crippling loads of firewood on their backs, Kikuyu style.

This is the challenge that our Impact Monitoring team face daily. The farmers who have invested in our irrigation pumps often live far off the main roads on hard to find shambas (farms). However, going out into the field – literally – to ask questions is the only way we can be sure that our efforts are truly helping people.

In this region, vehicles are rare, and vehicles with “MoneyMaker Pumps” written on the side and a mzungu (white guy) sitting up front is cause for major curiosity. Needless to say, we got a lot of attention.

Ten bone-jarring kilometers later, we reached the farm of Milkha Waithira and her husband Francis Kimotho—a lush and pretty plot that slopes steeply to a rushing creek. About ten years ago, they began growing French beans under contract for export to the UK. The exporter would provide seeds and fertilizer up front and would deduct the cost from the harvest, a great deal for cash-strapped farmers.

For eight years, the family could only plant about three pounds of bean seeds—not because they did not have the land, but because that was all they could irrigate using a bucket.

Two years ago, the bean exporter began to offer KickStart’s Super MoneyMaker Pumps to their farmers. Like the seeds and fertilizer, the company would front the supplies and allow the farmers to pay back the cost from the harvest.

Milkha was very excited about this opportunity. She knew that if she could irrigate more of her land, she could grow more beans and earn more money – enabling her to feed her family and send her children to school. She signed up for a MoneyMaker pump and that year she planted and irrigated twenty pounds of bean seeds and a large plot of kales. She repaid her loan in her first harvest, and then had three more harvests that year from her bean plants.

Before they started using their new irrigation pump, the family was earning less than $270 a year from their farm. Now they earn over $1,450 a year and in addition grow maize and kale for their own consumption.

Milkha and Francis invited us into their home, a traditional mud walled structure. The small living room was crowded with furniture the couple was able to purchase with their new wealth. Francis sat smiling silently while Milkha spoke with great pride, in Swahili and Kikuyu, about the spiritual, personal and material changes that being a successful entrepreneur has brought to her family.

They have six children; four are grown and have moved away. The two at home are in primary school and are looking forward to going on to secondary school—an opportunity their older siblings did not have.

An unseasonable rain fell the day of our visit, but we stayed dry under the new mabati (corrugated metal) roof the family had put on their house. A small chest sat with great importance on the hand carved sideboard in the room. Its precious content, a small black and white television set run on a car battery, another of Francis and Milkha’s recent additions to the household.

She spoke of some of the other material goods they plan to buy with their new wealth—a cell phone (cellular coverage in Africa is remarkably good), a solar panel, and maybe even motorized pump for the farm.

But the important changes in their lives, Milkha explained, were not their new material possessions.

She is now an employer, hiring her neighbors to help with the weeding and harvesting—at little more than a dollar a day, this is a good job where there are none. She was invited to join a local women’s savings society (called a merry-go-round) because of her improving income and standing in the community. The group makes loans to each other, but they also have an account at the local bank called Murata (“My Friend” in Kikuyu). When asked what the group thought they would do with their funds, she said they wanted to buy stock—not livestock—shares in companies! Apparently the tales of successful Silicon Valley investors have reached rural East Africa.

Most important to the couple was their plan to renew their marriage vows this December. They were married traditionally when they were young, but have long wanted to have their marriage blessed in church—something they could not afford before. Milkha invited us all back for their ceremony in December!

After saying our goodbyes to our new friends, we took another bumpy ride to the home of Gitari and Salome and their four children in Uthiru, a village about 20 km from Nairobi.

For many years Gitari and Salome were subsistence farmers, growing maize for their family and fodder for their one cow. A few years ago, they decided to grow kales and spinach to sell at the market.

But the weather in this region is hot and dry, so the crops needed constant watering. Their farm had a stream running through the middle, but the water had to be carried by hand to the crops. The work was so hard they could only cultivate a small portion of their two-and-a-half acres. Salome and Gitari hired some laborers to help out, but even they quit, exhausted from the work. That year they lost most of their crop.

In 2003 they decided to plant strawberries—a high value but delicate crop that needs regular watering. Gitari had seen a MoneyMaker pump being demonstrated in Nairobi, but he really hadn’t taken much interest then. But he realized that this new crop could mean more money for his family if he could keep them watered. He inquired about the MoneyMaker on his next trip into town. They planted a small plot of strawberries and started to save their income.

It took nearly a year, but Gitari and Salome finally saved enough money. In 2004, they bought the pump and borrowed hoses from friends. Within six months they managed to expand the area under irrigation and greatly increase their yield. The quality of the strawberries also improved, and they increased their income from $7 to $30 a week.

They have now started to grow other fruits and vegetables and have employed a full time farm worker whom they pay $25 a month plus room and board. They bought a second dairy cow and a cell phone, and most recently have bought another plot of land where they plan to build rental houses, to further diversify their income. Gitari and Salome are looking towards the future when they will save enough money to build a better house for their family and, when the time comes, have enough to send their children to the best secondary schools.

We are grateful to both families for the warm and gracious welcome we received. Our visits showed how the combination of hard work and the right tool can change struggle and despair into wealth and pride—the kind of pride that only comes from the success of ones own efforts.

Go Where There is No Path and Leave a Trail

Ralph Waldo Emerson advised, “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Thanks to the generosity of the Flora Family Foundation, twenty-one KickStart managers and Board Members gathered in the cool and misty foothills of Mt. Kenya to map out a trail for the next few years.

Our goal for this meeting was to discuss our goal of helping 400,000 more people out of poverty over the next three years. From this retreat will come a detailed plan to bring this vision to life.

The KickStart team laid out a three-prong approach to meet our goal: 1) Strengthen our presence in our current markets (Kenya, Tanzania, and Mali, 2) Widen our geographic coverage by getting our tools into new countries, and 3) Lower the barrier to entry for farmers through microfinance and lower cost products.

Of course, this retreat was also an opportunity to put faces and personalities with the names on emails, and come together as a team.

“One of the challenges of an organization like KickStart is that our people are spread out across the globe,” noted KickStart co-founder Martin Fisher. “Plus, we have many new staff members throughout the organization, so gathering together was critical if we want to be successful in our plans.”

“I am amazed at how our staff has grown since Nick and I founded KickStart in 1991. We have a tremendously talented group of people working at KickStart and if any team can make a significant dent in Africa’s poverty, this team can.”

We will be sharing some of the details of the plan with you in our next newsletter. Stay tuned.

Come to Africa. See for Yourself.

It’s been a busy summer (our winter actually, since we are just south of the equator), with visitors from around the globe. Folks from John Deere came from Moline, Illinois to spend a few days with us. We visited some pyrethrum farmers with our friends from SC Johnson. We welcomed some representatives from a European foundation interested in our work and our model. Stories about two of the families we visited are included here in this newsletter. And as you probably read, we gathered our staff from the corners of the globe to plan our future.

Kenya has been my home for many years now. It’s always exciting to have visitors, especially those who have never visited Africa before. Seeing the sense of awe and discovery on the face of a new visitor takes me back to my first time in Africa, and reminds me why I stayed.

I could write pages and still not adequately convey the experience of Africa. So instead I invite our donors and supporters to come see us yourself. If you have ever considered coming to Africa, please do. If your travel plans will bring you to Kenya, Tanzania, or Mali, let us know. We can introduce you to some farmers using our pumps and you can see how a simple tool like a MoneyMaker pump can change lives forever.

I guarantee that it will change your life too.

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