[Newsletter 1] Arrival & meeting with Nyaka
Hi everybody,
I arrived in Kampala last Monday morning. I know that some of you will tell me that I should have written my first newsletter earlier. That’s true and for once, I do not really have an excuse! 🙂 I started this exciting new adventure with more or less a world tour! If you want to get airline tickets at the right price (a few days before departure), be prepared to make a few stops! 🙂 I enjoyed a beer and fries in Brussels, a good coffee in Amsterdam, African songs in Nairobi, nothing interesting in Kigali and I finally landed in Entebbe, Uganda at 3:30 am. Fortunately, time flew because I found myself sitting next to a former BCG consultant who had left everything to launch his own NGO in Kenya.
#Nyaka, the mission
After a long night of two hours, direction Nyaka by boda (local taxi motorcycle) which dropped me in front of the NGO. In short, Nyaka’s goal is to provide access to education and healthcare to AIDS orphans through a holistic and community-based approach.
When parents die, it is often the grandmothers who take over. Nyaka gives them the means to support their grandchildren through trainings on entrepreneurship, micro-credit, awareness-raising … It’s more than 700 children in their schools and 6000+ grandmothers accompanied.
When I arrived at the association, I was warmly welcomed by the team: Sempa (Finance Manager), Jennifer (Country Director) and Shabnam (responsible for our project).
Quentin (who unfortunately will only arrive on Friday due to flight issues) will be put to work on engineering missions: water treatment, construction… and he will meet younger students to speak to them about engineering and help them with their study choices.
For my part, I am working on monitoring & impact measurement. At the end of our exchange, Jennifer said to me: “What I expect from you is that you can help us answer the following question: what does success look like?” Nice challenge! 🙂
#One meeting per day
As part of my discovery process, I contacted many high impact business entrepreneurs, NGO founders, ambassadors, local leaders … in order to meet one every day. I will share with you some of them. I interacted with Samantha Elghanayan (@Sam: thanks) working at Tugende – high social impact business. They offer loans to boda drivers to enable them to buy their motorcycles instead of renting (very expensive).
After 19 months, they can become owners through weekly repayments. Thereafter, they can double the income they would have earned by continuing to rent. When she joined the company three years ago, there were 300 drivers. Today, there are around 6,000. The traction was incredible: they only advertised during the first month, then it was 100% word of mouth.
#Interesting debate: NGOs vs. High impact business:
We had a passionate debate with Samantha on the pros and cons of launching an NGO vs. a high-impact company. The real advantage of an NGO is its exclusive access to grants and donations in exchange for performance indicators uncorrelated to profitability. However, the downside is independence: NGOs must comply with the expectations of their donors.
For example, Shauna of Educate explained to me that in order to obtain a grant from a major US donor (funding a school side project in the north of the country), she was obliged to provide free access to the 200 students of the school. They had to change their whole business model even though the families of the students were willing to pay.
Moreover, a high-impact company does not carry the image of a non-profit organization, which sometimes involves sacrifices, particularly on the management team’s wages. Donors are often reluctant to finance the operations and payroll of an NGO. Why should an entrepreneur with a social vision agree to sacrifice his standard of living even if his actions are ultra impactful? From a financial point of view, a high-impact company must be profitable and cash efficient from day 1. Through my job at Blisce, I have noticed that many sophisticated families / investors of significant size are increasingly defending specific causes (climate, social, etc.) via an impact investing allocation on which they seek a limited financial return accompanied by impact KPIs. Could these high-impact businesses be the future of NGOs? Will we see a hybrid model at the crossroads between high-impact business & NGOs? The future will tell… I hope that you are doing well. Reachable on WhatsApp, even on my boda! (@pap) 🙂
Have a great day.
Romain
[Newsletter 2] On the field in Kanungu & Rukungiri
Hi la Familia, les Potos, Blisce & EPIC,
How are you?
Since the last newsletter, my brother Quentin joined me on August 4th after spending more than 5 hours in the traffic jams to join Kampala. So stuck that the driver stopped by the roadside several times to give him some lessons on local flora and fauna! 🙂
#A mission but not only…
The next day we went to Jinja, a place known as the source of the Nile. In order to celebrate the arrival of Quentin, we did a level 5 rafting descent. In addition to a breathtaking landscape on both sides of the Nile, we took 8 rapids including several waterfalls several meters high. When the raft flips and you spend 15+ seconds under water, it’s a real adrenaline rush! 🙂
#Nyaka, data collection on the field
Our goal: measure the impact of Nyaka within the communities of Kanungu & Rukungiri (in the southwest of the country) and answer the question: “What does success look like?”
We moved to the second step of the project, which is to go and collect the data on the ground.
We were fortunate to travel to extremely remote areas where white faces did not run through the streets. 🙂 This week was a series of meetings with Nyaka primary and secondary school headteachers, teachers, religious leaders, clan & village leaders, government officials, local communities…
There were sometimes more than sixty people from several communities who joined to help us carry out our study. The most striking element was the perfect involvement of the different communities within the governance of Nyaka. In the event of a severe blow to Nyaka, thousands of people from all hierarchical, ethnic and religious levels will contribute together to face them. In parallel with the data collection, Quentin used his engineering skills on pressure problems in their water circuit and he organized science courses around 4 experiments.
#Unforgettable moments
Community of Grandmothers
After a one-hour exchange with a community of grandmothers for our data collection, they thanked us with a dance accompanied by local songs. A moment that will remain engraved in our memories… You can watch the video on the French version of this page 🙂
Live pitching smartphone app
We were pitched by a Nyaka team of 6 students passionate about new technologies, who introduced us to their innovations, in particular a smartphone application preventing patients from forgetting their medicines while receiving advice from doctors. Value proposition, business model, demo… everything was there! This app earned them first place in a national challenge involving all the private schools of the capital!
Volleyball match
Being both volleyball fans, we were invited for a fierce match with Nyaka students. The ground was rocky, the net distended and the ball worn but the level was really good. Notably a schoolgirl of 7 years max playing in dress and bare feet who positioned all her receptions with a surgical precision! 🙂
#The meeting of the week
I am currently reading the book of Jackson, the founder of Nyaka. He explains the foundations of his initiative following the deaths of his brother and sister from “slim” (AIDS) and introduces the woman who instilled the values of Nyaka. After building the first two classrooms, Jackson went to see Freda, a warm-hearted grandmother and a freshly retired teacher, who became Nyaka’s first head teacher. We had the opportunity to meet her, a rare and truly inspiring personality!
#How do people living in remote villages access bank loans and insurance?
In the case of large purchases (household products, animals, etc.), or when a relative has to go to the hospital for a costly operation, residents often have very limited incomes and no access to banking products and insurance. They organize themselves into a “trusted” group of ten to fifty members. Each month, members meet and define purchasing priorities. All members contribute monthly to a common pot, which is then allocated according to the needs of each.
For example, if each member wants a goat, every month all members will buy one in an order defined by a random draw. As far as insurance is concerned, it is about the same principle. The group negotiates a direct partnership with the hospital and each member will pay a monthly fee. In case of a hard blow, the family concerned will receive the appropriate healthcare. Since these groups are based on trust, it is essential to have a good reputation and to have strong roots in the specified area.
Hope you are doing well,
Have a great day,
Quent & Rom
[Newsletter 3] Impact assessment & Safari
Hi family, hi potos, hi Blisce, hi EPIC,
Here I am, just back from this extraordinary new adventure! My lucky brother enjoyed a few more hours by the pool before taking his plane back to France.
#Nyaka – Return to Kampala to start the 3rd phase of the project
The way back to Kampala was hectic because we opted for a local bus, which was overcrowded. When the bus stopped, we had to put in place a real strategy to keep an eye on our bags because, beyond the passengers, we saw fortune tellers, miracle drug sellers, dozens of skewer sellers… 🙂 Once we arrived, we found a nice guesthouse outside the city with a beach volleyball court where we met many different people during the matches (a professional football player, a researcher at Harvard…).
This week in Kampala was particularly studious in order to complete our respective reports. Regarding the impact assessment mission, I dedicated the first 2 days to consolidating the 4,100+ data points retrieved on the ground from the 3 Nyaka schools and the communities of Kanungu & Rukungiri in a format that Nyaka will continue to use for its internal & external reporting.
Then, I worked on building various dashboards to follow up on the identified KPIs before writing a summary report that we debriefed on Friday with the team.
Here are some interesting performance KPIs.
Nyaka is:
- 786 different students who benefited or are benefiting from the Nyaka education program since 2003 (program spread over 14 years + university)
- 156k+ hours of classes taught since 2003 (including 21k hours last year) by a full-time faculty team that reached 43 people this year
- 1.7M+ meals distributed within their schools since 2003
- 40 students currently in university
- 54% girls, all levels combined (13 times over the last 15 years, there were more schoolgirls than schoolboys)
- X1.66 up to X2.46 more chance of getting a grade 1 or 2 at their final exam at the end of primary 7 vs. the benchmark of schools in the district
- 436K people reached via radio broadcasts / visits in 2016 led by the anti-AIDS club of Nyaka primary school
Quentin focused on highlighting the main risks associated with the construction of the 3 schools with recommendations of implementation. His three main orientations were about: the foundations of certain buildings, the protection of water tanks and the safety in kitchens. During the debriefing, he interacted with Sempa, the person responsible for the follow-up of all the constructions.
So that as many staff members as possible could attend, we organized our farewell on the field (just before our return to Kampala), where we introduced them to products from the north of France. It was really nice because about 20 staff members came and gave us a very nice speech.
#Unforgettable Safari Queen Elizabeth Park
Even if we were busy during the week with our missions, we were real tourists during the weekends. Following Shabnam’s recommendations, we found the right tour operator. Bosco, our guide, grew up in the park and guided us all weekend in his SUV with an open roof. In addition to being really nice, he had an incredible network of friends, so we got all the best spots.
He found us a leopard that had just killed its prey, a pride of 7 lions, elephants, buffaloes, crocodiles, warthogs, antelopes, monkeys… As soon as his phone rang and he pressed the accelerator, we went up through the open roof, ready to spot the next animal! 🙂
This year again, an unforgettable adventure, and this time it was with Quent! A big thank you to EPIC and especially Elisa, Alexandre, Nicola and Charles-Henri, who made this exchange possible!
Have a good day, everyone,
See you soon,
Romain