KenyaConnections

It’s odd when good ideas emerge: usually at odd times in odder places. The idea for the EWB-MSU Fellows Program came up on a country-bus somewhere in between Nakuru and Kericho, Kenya. Our organization (Engineers Without Borders – Montana State University) had been working on water and sanitation projects in Khwisero District, Kenya for six years at that point and we had built a substantial network of Kenyan partners since we began. In fact, we established a Board of Directors in Khwisero in 2008 as a way to direct our projects to schools with the most critical sanitation and water needs as well as balance out project distribution across political boundaries. Our EWB-Khwisero Board is currently composed of school-teachers, government officials from the ministries of water, education and health as well as interested community members.

We found that the Board was a way that we would be able to navigate the political, familial and other cultural complexities of a region that was wholly unfamiliar to outsiders. We also had hopes that the Board would be a way to integrate more partners into active roles in our programs. In many ways, the Board has been a successful idea, though we found that the regular duties of our Kenyan Project Coordinator, Jackson Nashitsakha, were overwhelming and interfering with his bread-winning work as a farmer.

The EWB-Fellowship, or Fellows, program emerged as a way that we could bring in more Kenyan partners to work alongside out visiting students and ease the burden that Jackson was solely shouldering. We observed that there were always outstanding individuals that came out of each community in which we worked, offering their time in order to assist our organization in a wholly volunteer fashion. Ad-hoc surveying, computer, language or design lessons emerged between our travel members and these Kenyan volunteers, so it seemed intuitive to formalize these interactions as a program.

We worked with our Board and generated a program that was simple and reciprocal: what you get out of the program is a function of what you put in. If you want to learn how to run the Microsoft Office Suite, there is someone who can teach you. If you want to learn Luhyia (the local tribal language) someone can teach you.

We opened an application process to be run by our Project Coordinator and overseen by the Board. The Fellow position would be the equivalent of a part-time job during the summer, when our travel teams begin work. Our organization agreed to cover project related expenses that were incurred in volunteering (travel, airtime, etc.) though we didn’t provide compensation. Instead, we felt that over the course of a year, a fellow would be able to learn whatever he chose and come away from the program with a letter of recommendation, which at first sounds paltry, though a recommendation from a foreign NGO can go a long way in an oversaturated Kenyan job-market.

The EWB-Fellows program has been up and running for nearly two-years, and with three Fellows this year, we’ve found that it is the best way to add value to our operations. Not only do the Fellows benefit from ad-hoc training and community organizing, but our travel team members are better able to connect with a foreign culture and a foreign environment. Authentic friendships and mutual understanding have arisen out of this not-so-odd idea, the best part of it, though, is that any foreign organization can replicate it and realize the rewards.

-M