Nuru is intriguing new development project that is dedicated to eliminating extreme poverty throughout the world. It was started in september of 2008 by Jake Harriman, who attended the U.S. Naval Academy and served over 7 years in the Marine Corps as an Infantry Platoon Commander and a Special Operations Platoon Commander. This provides the organization with an interesting vantage point. Jake has made the connection between violence around the world and the hardships of extreme poverty. It’s this critique that is sadly lacking in today’s political discussions. I fear that as we continue to pour troops into Afghanistan and Iraq, we fuel hostilities and further ignore the root causes of violence.
Nuru has 5 areas of focus: Agriculture, Water & Sanitation, Healthcare, Community Economic Development and Education. It appears that they are currently tackling one project at a time – a wise decision for a new organization. Nuru is currently working in the Kuria district of Kenya, and their next project launches in Malawai in 2011. As an organization they are committed to empowering and training individuals from the communities they work in. I’m really curious to see an annual report. It would be great to know what kind of operating budget they’re working on, and how their resources are alocated.
This organization is definitely well packaged and well marketed. It’s got more of an MTV aesthetic than it does than it does a UNICEF one. That’s not a criticism. It doesn’t take long looking at non-profits and development organizations to realize that marketing is where many of them are trying to save some money. I know that with limited budgets, you want every penny to go directly to programming – but money intelligently spent (or well coordinated volunteer efforts) on marketing can greatly help with fund raising, and perception management. Those may be dirty words to a lot of idealists out there – but most realists know that how your organization is perceived incredibly important. Nuru could teach a class on it.
