Plans Are Not Achievements, Not Yet

Recently, Ribbon of Hope started assessing families for an orphan and vulnerable children program (OVC). The idea is that the families will bring up the children and Ribbon will support them. The kinds of support Ribbon will give will include advice on health and welfare, budgeting and household cost management and anything else we can advise on. We will also provide some financial support so the families can supplement household income by running a small business. The finance comes from private donors.

The assessments are difficult because there's no question of finding the most needy 22 children. It's unlikely that three or four Ribbon members could identify the most needy in any of the villages we work in, no matter how long we spent there. All we can do is identify as many as we can support and assess them to ensure that we really can succeed in helping each family to give the children what they need until they become independent.

The initial assessments were mostly encouraging, although some guardians are more in need of assistance than the children they are caring for. Some are probably even incapable of looking after another child, perhaps even incapable of looking after their own children. But other families are very capable and they should, with some help, also be able to set up and run some kind of income generation activity.

In retrospect, we were naive in thinking that asking each guardian or family to write a business plan would result in anything tangible that we could work on. We discussed with each person what they would like to do and how they would approach setting up their activity, if they had the finance. The discussions went well but the written business plans, at best, consisted of a list of goods and prices, at worst, one word and a cost. Most people can read and write a bit but many have rarely done so since they left school.

Feeling a bit stupid, I started to look up advice on writing business plans online. Some of what I found, I would be hard pressed to write myself. They are complex and use a lot of technical vocabulary which, having studied project management and related areas, I suspect is mainly bullshit. But thankfully, one site gave a simple list of the sorts of information you need to know before attempting to set up a business.

I am aware that starting up a business is not easy and that many businesses fail. Many of the income generation activities we have set up or helped to set up have failed or lapsed or bumped along, producing little benefit. But we are attempting small things, growing food crops, fruit and vegetables, keeping a cow or a goat or a few chickens. There's no reason why people should be made to jump through hoops that will have little or no bearing on whether they succeed or not.

Having said that, we need to know a handful of basic details from everyone, such as why they are starting the business, what they will sell and to whom, why people will buy from them and how much, how this will make them better off, how they will prepare for risks and cope with problems and how to run their finances, which is not always straightforward if you try to do it all in your head. We don't want to burden our clients with information that we need to collect. But we need them to answer these questions, so we have a solid foundation on which to build a small income generation activity.

No matter how dangerous it is to make assumptions, it's hard to get through a day without making some. I've made assumptions about people's working knowledge of English and even their level of education. English is an 'official' language but many have little opportunity to use it and even when they do, technical terms can be just sounds. Even those who have spent long enough at school and have done well enough there have few opportunities to use what they learned, and 'Standard 8', 'Form 4' or 'fluent' are also just sounds; grades are just numbers, often completely meaningless.

We are two thirds of the way towards the Millennium Development Goals, which developing countries are expected to have reached by 2015. But what will it mean if countries like Kenya achieve some or all of those goals? If lots of children enrol for school but hardly ever attend, perhaps never; if they get good grades but have learned nothing because the tests are just pages of multiple choice questions with tick boxes; if the teacher is absent most of the time, either because there is a shortage of teachers or because the teacher doesn't bother turning up most of the time? And similar remarks apply to other education indicators. Will these achievements be nothing but sounds or boxes ticked?

In countries where education has been failing for decades, it takes several generations for things to improve. The children we are hoping will grow up to be independent have siblings and parents who had little education. Even some of the teachers had a relatively poor education and some of the young people going to teacher training colleges now have managed to get through the system without learning much. I hope the aim of the Millennium goals is to make genuine improvements in people's economic circumstances, education, health, environment and infrastructure. But what I have seen is not encouraging.

Repeating 'good news' over and over again doesn't make it so. Saying people's lives have been transformed doesn't transform them. And writing things down doesn't make them any truer. Ribbon's work seems to involve creating some kind of bridge but sometimes I feel that we are attempting to translate the concrete into the amorphous, hoping that things like education and healthcare will become part of people's everyday lives. Somehow, these promises that have been made for so long seem to remain amorphous, things attained by the fortunate few who live far away, out of sight.

I guess the most important question for a simple business plan is how you intend to go from having very little to having a bit more and hopefully, enough. How does selling fish, keeping a cow or owning a motorbike ensure that each member of your family grows up to be able to have their own independent family? Perhaps writing it down oversimplifies things because running a business is about doing things, not just saying, writing or thinking them. We need written business plans but if we mistake them for the achievement of the goals of the business itself, we'll have nothing but bits of paper in a year's time! The business plan is so vital and yet completely useless if it remains just a plan. Bit like the Millennium Development Goals.

Ribbon of Hope Projects

It's a delicate balance sometimes, when you are trying to support orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and some other members of their family are even worse off than they are. Several of the guardians of the OVCs Ribbon of Hope Self Help Group are supporting face more immediate threats to their health than the children they are looking after. One mother is suffering from diabetes that appears to be very advanced. She is just recovering from TB and she has been losing her sight for some time. She is in her early twenties and is already having trouble caring for her daughter. If she was HIV positive, she could at least get antiretroviral drugs (ARV) for free. But as it's diabetes, the drugs are prohibitively expensive. Her own mother is on ARVs but she is old to be looking after a daughter and a granddaughter. The father of the child is absent.

Another HIV positive guardian is so sick that she has checked herself into a private hospital. Why she chose a private hospital when she can get the drugs for free is not clear. But she appears to be having trouble accepting that she is HIV positive and refuses to go to the local clinic, where she was diagnosed. You do hear stories of people preferring private hospitals but I doubt if this woman will benefit much from the care she gets there. And her life savings will not go too far, either. Maybe Ribbon of Hope can support one or two of her children but I think she has several others, who will all be vulnerable if anything happens to her. Her husband died some time ago, apparently of Aids.

Thankfully, some of the guardians are well enough to care for their own children, in addition to another child, usually a relative. They are all doing some kind of work but that usually involves long hours, low pay and a good chance that the employer will withhold the wages for as long as possible, months and even years. All the villages we are working in are sisal growing areas. These are vast tracts of land owned by a very small number of extremely rich business people and politicians. The villages are all isolated, several kilometers from the nearest tarred road. For people who live there, the main transport available is bicycle, motorbike, or hired bicycle or motorbike, for those who don't have their own.

We hope that each guardian will come up with some kind of income generation scheme, some way of making a bit of extra money. Ribbon of Hope will assist with loans, advice and perhaps other things. Some of the guardians already have a clear idea of what they would like to do and they have the skills and knowledge to start just as soon as the money is made available. Others are not so sure and are not quite ready. A couple of people seem unprepared to be completely honest or committed, but most had some kind of income generation activity up until the start of 2008. It's unbelievable how many people lost assets and businesses as a result of the civil unrest. Two and a half years later and many have not got back to where they were then and probably will not do so for some time yet. Some will be lucky just to get their land back but most have lost things they will never be compensated for.

After spending a few days visiting two of the villages where some of our clients live, we had to return to our fields, where the maize was in need of harvesting and the other crops, millet and sorghum, were in need of weeding. There has been terrible flooding in the last few months, since the maize was planted. Luckily, much of the maize has survived and the crop is looking good. The beans we planted between the maize plants were almost all washed away. The weeding is being done by some local people and in a few days we should have cleared the backlog and got back to the OVCs in the three other villages we work in.

I was very keen on demonstrating solar cookers and a couple of other simple technologies and I did some demonstrating a while back. But there has not been a lot of interest since. Ribbon of Hope has plenty of core activities to keep us busy and I wanted solar cookers and the like to be an additional activity that wouldn't take up too much time. I mentioned the ideas to the community volunteers whom we work with and they mobilized people. But after a few demonstrations, there were no requests for more. I'd like to do some refresher demonstrations but I'm not sure if it will be possible to drum up enough interest.

I think income generation schemes are good, especially when they work. But they often don't. Not everyone can be a business person. And as we have found from our own projects, mostly growing crops, there are a lot of things that can go wrong; too much rain, too little rain, diseases, pests, lack of market, poor infrastructure and downright dishonesty. That's why I try to persuade people to do some things that can save them money. If they spend a little less on cooking fuel, they will have more for food or other things. And you can save quite a lot, perhaps the equivalent of two or two and a half month's pay over a period of one year. I'd like to understand better why I have not been too successful in selling these technologies, which, by the way, are more or less free! It can be very hard to make money but it's not so hard to spend less.

But most of Ribbon of Hope's projects are going well at the moment. Some of the community based organizations are running themselves and we only visit now and again. One of the organizations that was doing badly at the start of the year, but turned itself around later, is now much stricter, which is a good thing. Too many times the work would be done by two or three people and the others would only turn up when the returns were coming in. A number of projects would have done well if the few workers just got on with it. But no one will work when they think others will help themselves to the results and many community based organizations fail because they are not strict enough about what people have to do in order to collect any of the group's winnings.

I think some people will do a very good job of supporting an extra child while continuing to look after their immediate family. Others may already be too overwhelmed by sickness and poverty. But then maybe we'll find additional ways of supporting them. So far, Ribbon of Hope has done very well keeping things ticking over. There have been challenges, some of which we have met, some of which have been too much. In the long run it's hard to say, but I'm optimistic about a lot of things. I'm just sorry I won't be able to stay here indefinitely to see how everything goes.

Ribbon of Hope's Mogotio Shamba

Photo: Beans, almost ready to harvest.

Today was a good day for Ribbon of Hope in Nakuru. We went to the Mogotio shamba (smallholding) to see how everything was growing. Much of the one and a half acre plot is planted with beans that were put down a few months ago. It was hard work planting them because they are packed in close together. It was harder work irrigating the crop through the dry months, but it was worth is as the field became lush and green. Now the beans are almost ready to harvest in the next couple of weeks, as long as the heavy rains don't destroy them. The rains have already beaten some of the crop into the ground but we'll hope for the best.



Photo: Amaranth, almost shoulder height.

And there are other crops in the field, also almost ready to harvest. There's coriander, kale, amaranth, tomatoes and spinach. These were planted later than the beans, but they are growing quickly because of the heavy rains. Earlier crops that were planted, such as onions, green peppers and kunde have more or less peaked and are declining now, but they were worth the effort, especially the green peppers.



Photo: In the foreground, coriander and some members of Ribbon of Hope.

The idea of growing these common foods is that local people will do the work and they will then sell the produce or buy it at low prices. About five or six people have been involved in producing all this food so they will now be able to use it themselves, sell it to friends or sell it in the market. It's surprisingly reasonable to rent land in this part of Kenya and surprisingly expensive to buy land. Unfortunately, it's hard to keep up the work and provide security and the like on rented land and this has been an uphill struggle from the start. But again, we hope for the best.



Photo: A fine looking bed of kale or 'sukuma wiki', as it's called here.

We have rented another plot of land, also a bit over an acre, in a field nearby. This is also close to the river and so should be easy enough to irrigate. It is now completely planted with watermelon plants. It took a short time to plant the whole field but it will take a lot of work to look after this valuable crop. For now, there's not much to see in the field, a few spots of green. Actually, too many spots of green and we have to weed the whole thing tomorrow. But in a few weeks time the field should be covered in melon vines and in a few months, a beautiful and fragrant crop.



Photo: A recently planted field of watermelon.

Ribbon of Hope has other shambas but this one has been the most successful, so far. This is probably because the same people come to do the work, week in, week out. Other shambas don't always receive the same dedication, though they should work out, eventually.

In addition to producing onions, green peppers and kunde, this shamba produced a fantastic crop of butternut squash last year. Ribbon has been able to invest in a petrol pump and, later on, a foot pump. The petrol pump is great but it does cost a lot to run and also it seems to suffer from a lot of engine problems. The foot pump is a great addition and uses no fuel (!) but we haven't had it long enough to really say how good it is. It just feels nice to have a pump that doesn't require petrol, given the disadvantages of having to use fossil fuels, as if we were fossils ourselves.



Photo: Tomatoes, filling up nicely as a result of the El Nino rains.

It's a bit early to say how cost effective these small economic interventions are. The amount of money spent is not huge but it remains to be seen how good the harvest is and if there is a good market for the various produce. Undoubtedly, such projects increase self-reliance considerably, even where they don't produce much. But in the long run, we would like to be able to increase the number of such projects and have more successful harvests than unsuccessful ones. I'll post up any further news and progress as and when.