Fighting Poverty in Kenya by Selling Water Pumps to Poor Farmers - Spencer Michels reports on the story of how a California man sees the chance to increase access to clean water in Kenya through the use of foot-pumps.
]]>Absolutely, writes KickStart co-founder Nick Moon writes in the African Executive . But only we can move from rain-fed agriculture to "brain-fed" agriculture.
]]>Dar es Salaam, November 1, 2009. KickStart Tanzania is now packaging its award-winning MoneyMaker pumps with everything a smallholder farmer might need to quickly set up the equipment and start irrigation. In line with the government’s focus on Kilimo Kwanza, KickStart has modified the MoneyMaker line of pumps so that farmers across Tanzania can now quickly and easily set up human powered farm irrigation schemes to get higher yields from their farms.
KickStart has tracked the results of farmers using MoneyMaker pumps in Tanzania, and data indicates that they quickly move from having farm income of Tsh 120,000 per year to more than Tsh 1,000,000 per year by using irrigation. The pumps are a proven vehicle for farmers to move toward greater food and income security.
“Now the pumps will come with both the hoses and spare parts, so farmers know that they’re getting the right pieces to kick start their rise to prosperity,” says Anne Otieno, KickStart’s National Sales Manager. The Super MoneyMaker Pump and MoneyMaker Hip Pump kits will now include the MoneyMaker Pump, a 7.5m inlet hose, a 25m outlet hose, spare piston cups, rubber straps, and an operating manual in Kiswahili.
The company is responding to long-time demand from its customers and dealers to offer a complete product solution. When they buy a MoneyMaker pump, farmers now can go straight to their field, unpack the pump, attach the necessary components, and quickly put it together using the assembly instructions.
MoneyMaker Hip Pump Kits are being sold for Tsh 99,000 and Super MoneyMaker Kits are available for Tsh 167,000 at Authorized MoneyMaker Dealers nationwide. KickStart estimates that by buying one of the Bundled Kits, farmers can save about Tsh 30,000 over buying the individual components separately.
“I am happy to hear that finally we will be selling bundled pumps. This will make it much easier for farmers to get something complete with all the right sized hoses, and at a good price,” says Mama Azama of Azama Agrovet in Urambo Tabora, a longtime Authorized MoneyMaker dealer.
KickStart has sold more than 36,000 pumps across Tanzania, lifting more than 150,000 people out of poverty. KickStart has approximately 200 dealers nationwide, primarily leading Agro dealers, serving the needs of rural farmers.
About KickStart
KickStart International is a social enterprise with a mission to take millions of people out of poverty. Since 1991, tens of thousands of poor families have used KickStart products to create sustainable businesses, and live more independent and fulfilling lives.
The organization has operations in Kenya, Tanzania, Mali, Burkina Faso and as well sells to other African countries and NGOs. The Irrigation Pumps are sold through independent farm shops including Agrovets, hardware stores and other retailers that serve small-scale farmers.
Contacts:
For questions, please contact Alfred Wise, +255 783 321001.
For information on becoming a dealer, please contact Lilian Meena
at 0786 081 911.
(Martin comes on around the 10:00 mark)
]]>BBC journalist Rory Cellan-Jones spoke with KickStart's IT Director Martin Rogena about what this means for KickStart, Kenya, and East Africa.
What does Africa need more - easy access to fresh water or better cheaper internet connections? A no-brainer you might think, but a journey I took out from Mombasa into the countryside set me thinking.
My guide was Martin Rogena, a Kenyan working for an organisation called KickStart, which supplies irrigation pumps to farmers across East Africa. Martin is also a big believer in the power of the internet to transform countries like Kenya...
Our destination was a little settlement among some low hills about 10 miles from the beach where the Seacom cable bringing broadband to the region comes ashore.
We watched as they watered their crop of tomatoes which, along with a field of maize and some other vegetables, was the means of support for around 20 people. Then we visited their homes - simple mud huts, with chickens and dogs sharing the yard where the children played.
Then, as we sat outside one of the huts, Martin Rogena got out his laptop, plugged in a broadband dongle, and went online at a reasonable speed - he was picking up the signal from the nearby mast, which is in turn linked to the fibre-optic cable at the coast. But why, I asked, did a faster internet connection matter to a charity which was trying to alleviate the impact of drought?
He explained that Kickstart collects data from every pump it supplies across the region, sending staff armed with laptops to talk to the farmers and make sure they are getting the right results. From its Nairobi office, It also needs to communicate with donors around the world and with its branch office in Tanzania.
The charity is already finding that faster broadband is making communication easier - and is cutting costs, though perhaps not to quite the extent that has been promised.
"Any dollar we save means we get more pumps to the people," says Martin, "and our mission is to end poverty."
The problem is not, as some claim, that "we" are not doing enough. The problem is that "we" are doing the wrong things. The current economic crisis makes this problem even more acute. With governments, foundations and individual donors drastically cutting funding, now is the time to focus our efforts and funding on those organizations with efforts that have proven results, a pathway to sustainability and the potential for world-wide adoption.
Real Good Not Feel Good is a simple framework donors can use to focus their giving. We hope that Real Good Not Feel Good becomes a movement of donors and social entrepreneurs committed to creating lasting change in the world.
Check out our new website: www.realgoodnotfeelgood.org.
Use the "Share This" link to post to Facebook, Digg, MySpace and other social networking sites.
]]>KickStart International, a San Francisco-based organization that fights poverty in Africa by creating and selling simple tools that help poor entrepreneurs increase their income, was awarded the $35,000 first-place prize. Among its innovations is the MoneyMaker irrigation pump, which allows small-scale growers to produce high-value crops year-round and make the transition from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture.
]]>"Peter Drucker was among the first to articulate that innovation--change that creates a new dimension of performance--is essential for all organizations to thrive," said Rick Wartzman, director of the Drucker Institute. "This includes businesses, of course, but it's also true for nonprofits. This year's crop of winners illustrates precisely what Peter was talking about."
The Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation has been given annually since 1991 to recognize existing programs that have made a real difference in the lives of the people they serve. Cash prizes are designed to celebrate, inspire and further the work of innovative social-sector organizations based in the United States.
KickStart officials noted how pleased they were to receive the Drucker Award. "We are extremely honored," said co-founder and CEO Martin Fisher, Ph.D. "Nick Moon and I had two goals in mind when we founded KickStart: to get millions of people out of poverty and, in the process, change the way the world fights poverty. When we first started, the idea of using business models to solve social problems was considered crazy--if not complete heresy. Today social enterprise is the most vibrant sector in philanthropy. Peter Drucker's work was a real inspiration to us."
KickStart International impressed the judges, in part, because of the extraordinary results it has demonstrated. More than 66,000 profitable enterprises have been created using its MoneyMaker pumps. Farmers utilizing the pumps see, on average, a 10-fold increase in farm income. KickStart estimates that its pumps have helped lift 330,000 people out of poverty. (For more, please visit www.kickstart.org.)
"Peter taught that for any nonprofit organization, the bottom line must be measured in changed lives," Wartzman said. "KickStart's bottom line is most impressive in this regard."
The Drucker Institute will honor the winner and two runners-up on Oct. 28 in Los Angeles at a gala dinner. Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, will be the keynote speaker. The dinner will be preceded by an all-day conference: "When the Bottom Line is Changed Lives: How Do We Know Whether Nonprofit Organizations are Effective?"
To attend the dinner or the conference, which will feature leading experts in the field and a keynote address by Karen Baker, California's Secretary of Service and Volunteering, you must register at www.DRUCKERinstitute.com.
About the Drucker Institute
The Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University is a think tank and action tank whose purpose is to stimulate effective management and ethical leadership across all sectors of society. It does this, in large part, by advancing the ideas and ideals of Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern management.
The Institute acts as a hub for a worldwide network of Drucker Societies, volunteer-driven organizations that are using Drucker's teachings to affect positive change in their local communities.
In addition, the Institute maintains a digital archive of Drucker's papers; undertakes research that builds on Drucker's writings; offers a major prize for nonprofit innovation; producescurricular materialthat distills Drucker's decades of leading-edge thinking; applies Drucker's work to current events (including through a regular online column in BusinessWeek by Institute Director Rick Wartzman); presents a slide show exploring the "Responsibility Gap"--society's collective failure to be good and ethical stewards of our resources, people and institutions; and hosts visiting fellows with Drucker-like insights and values.
The Institute is a close affiliate of the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management. For more on the Institute and its programs, go to www.DRUCKERinstitute.com.
]]>Too often this means that giving is driven by emotion rather than by rational evaluation.
To make real progress in tackling the worlds most pressing problems, donors need to be able to distinguish between the "Real Good" and the "Feel Good."
Feel Good solutions address symptoms. Real Good solutions attack root causes. Real Good solutions often seem counter-intuitive. They may appear, at first, hard headed or hard hearted. But this is because the feel good solutions we’ve to which we have become accustomed, usually position an organization as a “rescuer” of people, animals, or habitat. Real Good solutions recognize that the world’s poorest people are able and eager to improve their own lives. They create opportunities rather than dependence.
KickStart founder Martin Fisher, and Kevin Starr of the Mulago Foundation put together this brief guide to help donors separate the Real Good from the Feel Good.