Excellent! - excellentdevelopment.com

Thanks to MCC, our major funders, we are very lucky to have Jacob and Alvera Stern as part of our Excellent Development Kenya team in Kola. MCC, who are funding 160 dams over a 5 year period, also support NGOs by providing skilled and experienced secondees. When Jim Bowman, Kenya Country Director, offered to recruit and fund some staff to help us with capacity building – we were delighted to accept. We had hoped for a married couple – and whilst our main priority was agricultural experience – we were hoping that the ‘other half’ would have other skills we could benefit from. Consequently we were even more delighted when we received Jacob and Alvera’s application – what follows is Alvera’s story that will explain why!

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What to do when you are thinking of retiring: Don’t!!

We are Jacob and Alvera Stern, two of the newest, oldest and greyest employees at the Kola offices of Excellent Development Kenya. Working at Excellent Development Kenya was a good decision for us. We had worked in Zimbabwe, Greece, the Bahamas, and the United States for many years, and decided when we got to our mid-sixties we would look for work in agriculture in Africa.

We started our working careers in Zimbabwe, teaching Science for six years at a Secondary school. We then went to graduate school at Pennsylvania State University in the United States. Jacob has a Ph.D. in agronomy, and Alvera has her doctorate in Education and Counselling.

Jacob spent the next 36 years working in agrobusiness in Africa, Greece, and the United States. One of his favourite jobs was working as Agricultural Development Manager in Africa and the Middle East for a large company. During that time, he visited most countries in Africa, and vowed to work there again some time. Alvera spent her career working in alcohol, drug, and mental health services at the community, state, and national level. Much of this work was managing grants, contracts, and evaluation studies with community development groups. Her last job was working for the United States Government in supervising the communications and publications for alcohol, drug, and mental health services nationally.

When Jacob turned 64 we started to look quite seriously for agricultural work in Africa. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that there were many organizations interested in our backgrounds, education, and experience. We were quite willing to work for room, board, and allowance, which may have made a difference! We saw the job at Excellent Development Kenya advertised on the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) website. They are a major funder of Excellent Development Kenya. We had worked with the Mennonites in our first jobs in Zimbabwe, and were intrigued with the job announcement. So we spent many hours researching Excellent Development on the internet: by the time you have worked forty some years, you know what to look for in a job! We were very impressed with the organization. It was quite obvious to us that this group knows what it is doing. Its long experience showing very steady leadership and growth over thirty years was very attractive to us. So we applied and were hired almost immediately.

So here we are having more fun than is necessary! Jacob is trainer and coach in agroforestry, working with the three field managers and twelve field officers who interact with community groups. He spends many hours in the field with the staff, observing and making suggestions to improve the techniques used in dry land agriculture. His favourite statement he learned from Joshua, “If you take care of the land, the land will take care of you.” And his favourite activity is observing the community groups taking enormous joy in the results of their hard work: available water, good crops, growing trees, and healthy animals.

Alvera is the trainer and coach for community development activities. She is finding that training in Kenya is much like training groups in the United States. The major difference is that the meetings in Kenya are often in the shade under an acacia tree, instead of a fancy hotel. And the lunch menu is maize and beans instead of chicken and salad. She is also busy writing policies, procedures, and orientation materials. Excellent Development Kenya gets visitors from many parts of the world who are interested in successful dry land farming, especially sand dam construction and related agricultural techniques. In an oral tradition culture, this expertise is communicated orally. But for some reason, our overseas visitors like written detail. So Alvera is writing up technical manuals and field notes for the sand dam and agricultural practices Excellent Development Kenya is promoting.

Tips for older workers who do not want to retire:

1. Think of your very favourite activity that you want to spend time in when you leave your regular job.

2. Give yourself a year or two to find something you like.

3. Start exploring opportunities on the internet. There are job search sites where you list your interests, experience, and education. They then match you with interested organizations. We used www.finishers.org that works with over 100 Christian organizations with jobs available.

4. Be realistic: volunteer jobs that provide room, board, and allowance are easier to find and give more flexibility than salaried positions. In our mid-sixties, we are no longer interested in high stress supervisory positions, our children are grown, and the eight grandchildren are quite impressed that their grandparents are working in Kenya!