Excellent! - excellentdevelopment.com

Emily Ambrose, PA for Excellent Development UK, enjoyed meeting and talking to Excellent Development Kenya (EDK) field staff on her recent visit.

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EDK currently has over 50 staff working to enable self-help groups to achieve their goals of water and food security. Meeting the staff and learning more about their work highlighted to me the significance of what is being achieved.

The region of Ukambani, South East Kenya, is Excellent Development Kenya’s operational area. The team have divided this area into six zones, each with a Field Manager, who manages a team of 3 or 4 Field Officers.

Each field officer works with 4 or 5 community groups and acts as a link between the communities and the charity.

The Beginning of the Journey

Rather than approaching potential groups, an essential element of EDK’s work is that the relationship must be initiated by a community approaching the charity.

A community will need to form or have formed an independent organisation known as a Self-Help Group (SHG), which may be formally registered with the local government.

Often a group will approach EDK staff because they have heard of or seen the fruits of the work that has been done with other communities.

Before a SHG is taken on, they need to demonstrate that they are willing to work with EDK’s philosophy. A group who is seen to be interested only in the prospect of funding without working towards creating their own benefits will not be taken on.

The groups are helped to understand Excellent’s ethos that ‘nothing comes for free’ - the long-term success of the projects relies on the community members experiencing genuine ownership of the work by choosing what needs to be done and doing it themselves with support from the charity, rather than receiving handouts.

Each group goes through a probationary period of up to a year where they work with the field staff to establish the potential of a successful working relationship.

The next step is to work with the group to define their vision for the future. This comes from discussing their problems, needs and desires with their Field Manager, and identifying where Excellent Development can fit in to their plans.

Each Self Help Group is different. They will have different group dynamics, they will vary in size and gender distribution and they will have different plans for the future. But a common thread runs through all the groups; the need for food and water.

The role of the Field Managers and Field Officers are very important, as they are the people who have direct contact with each of the communities. It is a multi-faceted job. All the field staff are trained in agriculture, but they also need excellent inter-personal skills in order to relate well to the community groups.

Once the group’s vision is outlined, they will work with the field staff to identify where they require Excellent’s help. This often starts with a sand dam, but equally it might be a pipeline or water tank. Each community has different requirements, the need for water being a common first step.

Field officers visit each of their communities every week, and they constantly review how the group’s plans are progressing and what support they need (e.g. training, seeds).

A field officer’s job is a hard one, and they have to travel great distances from one group to another. Although they use public transport to travel long distances, the geography is such that vast distances also have to be covered by foot, and this is one of the main challenges that the field staff face every day.

Working with the groups brings its own struggles, particularly as some are resistant to change. Even groups who have seen and acknowledged what can be achieved can be reluctant to make the steps themselves because of the risks involved if it doesn’t work.

This is a challenge for the field staff because it can take some time before the communities will see the fruits of their hard work. One example is the popular practice of growing maize, which needs a lot of water and does not survive well in times of drought. Drought-resistant crops such as millet and sorghum can reduce the likelihood of failed harvests, but this takes time to demonstrate and is an enormous leap of faith for the groups to take.

In some cases the prospect of hard work without immediate benefits can cause some members to leave the groups in the early days of the partnership. It is difficult to make free time to invest in future goals when contending with more immediate day-to-day pressures of getting enough to eat. It is the power of sharing a common vision that enables people to overcome this challenge.

What Comes Next

Training is the next key ingredient of the work that Excellent does with communities, and involves both skills passed on from the field staff, such as terracing or group governance, along with community exchanges where different groups come together to share and show what they have learnt.

This enables the groups to develop further. From the Field officers and Managers working with the groups to find out their needs, followed by the physical work of dam building and terracing, the training programme works to build on this, nurturing the groups, and cementing and enhancing their vision, ready for a future without Excellent Development.

The Future

There needs to be an exit strategy in place for groups that reach maturity and can continue to develop without the charity’s help.

Once a community has access to clean water and can grow more food for their families and animals they find themselves in a better position to concentrate on income generating activities or further improving their immediate environments. Our job is to help a community to reach this position.

Our partnership with a community will always stay within the boundaries of our expertise, i.e. food and water security. Beyond this some communities may want to pursue help in other areas, for example with healthcare, or micro-finance, and will therefore go on to work with other NGOs whose expertise lies in these areas.

As Excellent Development is a relatively young charity, many of the groups are some way from this stage. The work that some of the communities are already doing suggests this is a realistic vision, but finding the right time will be crucial. The current drought is testing them hard, however commitment remains strong. The road to food security may be long and hard, but it will bring invaluable rewards.