We are delighted to announce that KOMAZA’s founder and CEO, Tevis Howard, has been recognised for his achievements as a social entrepreneur by being selected as an Ashoka Fellow.

Ashoka is the largest association of social entrepreneurs in the world, having elected its first Fellows in India in 1981, and has since grown to over 2,000 Fellows in over 60 countries across the globe. Ashoka Fellows are recognised for their roles in developing innovative solutions to social problems and for having the potential to change societal patterns worldwide. They are selected on the basis of demonstrating unrivalled commitment to bold new ideas, proving that compassion, creativity, and collaboration are tremendous forces for change.

Tevis was put through a rigorous evaluation process, including a series of in-depth interviews, a judging panel, and a final executive board vote to establish his suitability for this prestigious award, based on his personal credentials and the impact of KOMAZA’s work in rural Kenya. Tevis and KOMAZA will now have direct access to the wider Ashoka network of Fellows, providing opportunities to exchange ideas and develop creative solutions with other award winners. As an Ashoka Fellow, Tevis will also receive a stipend to help cover the cost of the time he dedicates to leading our organisation.

This is an important and exciting achievement for Tevis and KOMAZA, and we are thrilled that his efforts have been recognised by such a visionary organisation.

As mentioned in a previous post, KOMAZA is a young organisation comprised mostly of generalists, who often seek partnerships with specialists to help us achieve the highest quality of work.  We have worked closely with volunteers from Statistics Without Borders over the past year, and with them have made a big push to improve our monitoring and evaluation capacity.  With their help we have greatly improved our ability to collect and analyze data on our social impact, tree growth, tree mortality and a variety of other important indicators.  In this post, I would like to recognize and thank Statistics Without Borders for the assistance they have given KOMAZA.

Statistics Without Borders  is “an apolitical organization under the auspices of the American Statistical Association, comprised entirely of volunteers, that provides pro bono statistical consulting and assistance to organizations and government agencies in support of these organizations’ not-for-profit efforts to deal with international health issues (broadly defined)”. One of their largest recent projects is in Haiti,  where they are helping collect data to assess the impact of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake. The organization is involved in a large number of projects, including two with KOMAZA.

The first project that we teamed with Statistics Without Borders on was the social impact baseline. Their experts provided KOMAZA with guidance through all stages of this project, from training guidelines for enumerators, to using SPSS and STATA software to analse baseline data. They also provided timely and detailed responses to questions about data entry and validation, and constructive advice on the household questionnaire.

This input from experts gives KOMAZA greater confidence in our numbers, and will allow us to accurately measure our impact. As Kevin Starr, Managing Director of the Mulago Foundation and friend of KOMAZA, said in a 2008 article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “If an intervention can’t demonstrate real impact, it shouldn’t be scaled up. We don’t invest in organizations that don’t measure impact: they’re flying blind and we would be too.”

The second project that Statistics without Borders has helped us with is collecting data on the growth of KOMAZA trees. There are two reasons we need to know how well our trees are growing. The first is forward looking: when will we be able to harvest our trees as building poles? This information will help us plan the optimal harvest time. The other is backwards looking: what do current patterns of tree growth tell us about the importance of various inputs (such as rainfall at planting time, number of farmers per field staff member)? This information helps us improve our operations to maximise tree growth.

John Hall from Statistics Without Borders helped KOMAZA develop a robust system for collecting tree growth data, and I particularly appreciated John’s patience and flexibility in designing operationally achievable methods to improve our data quality.

Overall, I have been very impressed with the volunteers from Statistics Without Borders. Their dedicated staff use their years of hands-on statistical experience to help organizations like KOMAZA collect high quality data and conduct high quality analysis. In our case, this data will help to show the impact of our intervention, as once farmers receive income from tree harvests the baseline will allow us to accurately measure the improvement of their living conditions over time.  Already, tree growth analysis has helped inform our operations in a number of ways.

Ultimately, Statistics Without Borders has given us confidence in our numbers, and those numbers are critical in helping us improve the way we work with smallholder farmers in rural Kenyan drylands. We encourage other organisations to make use of the high quality service provided by Statistics Without Borders, and look forward to working with their volunteers again in the future!

KOMAZA is a young organisation.  At this phase of growth our staff is comprised mostly of generalists, quick learners who can apply themselves to diverse projects ranging from harvesting trees to developing GIS mapping systems. However, to help us achieve the highest quality of work our staff often seek partnerships with specialists. For example, we have partnered with Geodyssey Geospatial to create a GIS mapping system for our area of operations, and with Statistics Without Borders to help in the design of our social impact baseline and in the design of our tree growth sample selection.

One area where KOMAZA has received important external support is in adapting a forestry growth model to our needs.  Forestry models are a set of mathematical relationships that explain tree growth in response to environmental factors (like soil fertility and rainfall) and management interventions (like thinning and irrigation). Such models enable forestry organisations to predict tree growth – for example, what will the average DBH (diameter at breast height) of KOMAZA trees be in 5 years?

Such predictions enable us to plan for our harvests, as trees must be above a minimum DBH and height before we can sell them as certain products. There are two main reasons why we need to know approximately how long it will take for trees to reach harvestable size: first, so that we can give farmers accurate expectations about the timeframe for return on their investment; and second, so that we develop a workable timeframe for our harvesting systems (buying the necessary tools from chainsaws to logging trucks, setting up treatment facilitates, etc.).

Knowing exactly when to harvest helps us to maximize profits, which in turn allows us to return more money to farmers.

The tree growth model that best fits KOMAZA’s needs is the “3PG” model (standing for Physiological Principles to Predict Growth). This model is ideal for KOMAZA for three reasons:

1. The software to run this program is freely available
2. This model has already been calibrated for our species of Eucalyptus (Grandis Camaldulensis)
3. The model allows for us to enter different inputs for different ‘sites’ – crucial for us as a micro forestry organisation that plants 200 trees on a large number of scattered farms (each with different soils and varying rainfall), rather than a plantation with 200,000+ trees on a continuous plot (where climate and soil does not vary as much).

After some initial research into this model, I wanted to get an expert opinion on the suitability of 3PG to KOMAZA. So I emailed one of the developers of the model – Australian forestry expert Joe Landsberg. I was very impressed with his quick and enthusiastic reply “I would like to be able to help. I think  3PG will do a good job for you, and it shouldn’t be too hard to tailor it to your needs.” Joe then advised me extensively on how KOMAZA could make best use of the model. Additionally, he gifted KOMAZA a copy of his recent book “Physiological Ecology of Forest Production,” which gives a detailed background on forest physiology needed to understand the 3PG model, as well as a chapter on the model itself. It will be an invaluable addition to our library, providing a useful reference tool for many of our more technical forestry needs.

Joe also put us in contact with the co-author of the book, Peter Sands, who has also been very obliging in helping  KOMAZA reach a workable stage with 3PG. Specifically, Peter helped us to use readily available inputs to calculate some of the more complicated data points such as vapour pressure deficit and solar radiation.

Joe and Peter’s generosity has been greatly appreciated – their time and patience has helped KOMAZA understand the power of the 3PG model. Thanks to their help, KOMAZA will be able to use the 3PG model to plan for optimal harvesting time, which will, in turn, help us to return the highest possible profits to our farmers.

Nearly a month after completing the first-ever harvest of KOMAZA trees, it is a good time to reflect upon the effects that this milestone will have on our organization.  These are many and far-reaching, as we have returned a significant amount of money to farmers, learned lessons that are critical for us to fine-tune our program, and observed the initial re-growth of the recently harvested trees – a hugely important development for the long-term prospects of our farmers.

Guiding Income into Impact

Twenty-nine farmers who planted with KOMAZA in April 2008 each harvested roughly one-third of their tree farm, for a total of 2,838 trees.  KOMAZA arranged the harvest and sale of these trees, returning over $5,000 total, or roughly $210 a farmer.  Locally, that is enough to pay school-related costs (clothing, books, etc.) for three children in primary school, or to install running water or electricity in a home.

Before returning this money we conducted financial trainings with farmers, walking them through the costs and benefits of activities such as planting various quantities of common crops.  We also surveyed the farmers who harvested, gathering valuable feedback on their decision to harvest and satisfaction with KOMAZA’s program.  Importantly, when asked how they were planning to spend the money from the harvest, their replies were:

• 62% School Fees for Children
• 57% Costs Related to Planting (i.e. seeds, fertilizer, hiring someone to work in their shamba)
• 57% Investing in or Starting a Business
• 57% Household Needs

Prior to receiving income from the harvest, farmers received training on the costs and benefits of various investments.

Incorporating New Knowledge

Lessons learned from this harvest will lead to important, tangible changes to KOMAZA’s program.  These include: designing a future harvesting capability that involves the continuous harvest of trees, rather than treating harvesting as an occasional time-bound project; basing our communication to farmers about the harvest cycle on a tree’s size (which determines its commercial value) rather than its age; and a renewed emphasis on short and medium-term crops in order to return more money to farmers sooner, thus easing the financial demands to harvest before trees reach full maturity.

Some learning is still ongoing.  For example, we are currently running a retail pilot that is designed to help us gain a better understanding of local market prices and demand for building poles. This pilot is important as it develops our delivery capacity, but it also has high symbolic value.  It is a point of pride that, for the first time, a KOMAZA sign marks the front of a lumber yard off of the Mombasa-Malindi highway, advertising approximately 700 building poles that were grown by farmers in our program.

The Importance of Successful Coppicing

While we must wait until the end of the rainy season to gather official numbers, general observation and anecdotal evidence tell us that the vast majority of the harvested trees’ stumps have already begun to coppice. Coppicing, a property of eucalyptus that allows stumps from harvested trees to re-grow, has always been an important consideration in KOMAZA’s program as it extends the life of a tree-farm well beyond the first time that trees are harvested.  Because of coppicing KOMAZA is able to harvest with farmers multiple times, returning periodic income while still allowing some trees to grow to their maximum height (and thus becoming more valuable).

Successful coppicing indicates that there are many more harvests to come.

The Big Picture

Perhaps most importantly, this harvest marks a major step in solidifying our relationship with the farmers in our program.  After three years of waiting patiently, the income they received proves that KOMAZA is on track to deliver on its promise to generate long-term, life-changing income.  Looking towards the future, a high rate of coppicing indicates that the stumps from these already-harvested trees will provide continued high-quality repeat harvests and income for years – and potentially decades – to come.