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About
Organization Description
KOMAZA is a start-up social enterprise in Kenya that works with rural farm families living in chronic, extreme poverty. We are developing a novel microforestry social enterprise to create unprecedented cash income for our families. Our program will also have significant collateral benefits to the environment, by creating a sustainable supply of wood to curb rampant deforestation, driven by ravenous wood market demand. KOMAZA invests in each farm family to generate a permanent gain in farm income by unlocking the economic potential of commercial forestry. We provide farmers with a complete product/service package to generate maximum profits from tree farming: top-quality tree planting inputs on credit, comprehensive training to properly plant and maintain tree farms, and complete value capture services to access high-margin local and export markets.
Our program is designed to be usable by the extreme poor, and is especially well suited to families living on semi-arid, degraded land that is ill-suited for other agricultural interventions. Our goal is not simply to touch lives, but to create total life-change—a permanent end to extreme poverty. Over a single 8-year harvest cycle, our trees will return to each family 10-25X an average family’s annual income. Our ultimate goal is to create a profitable end to rural poverty. With an innovative social enterprise model, we expect to be profitable in the long-term; we currently anticipate each farm returning a 10-20% IRR to KOMAZA, and “profits” will be reinvested in serving new families.
KOMAZA has been operating full-time since June 2007. We currently serve 150 farm families (almost 1,000 children). Our target is to have scaled to over 3,000 families by the end of 2010, and over 15,000 families by the end of 2012. KOMAZA is one of the most externally-validated social enterprise start-ups, winning support from the highly-selective Draper Richards Foundation and Mulago Foundation’s Rainer Arnhold Program. More at www.komaza.org.
Job Description
We are seeking talented young professionals and/or exceptional recent university graduates with a career interest in business/innovation to serve in a position that combines both field and management experience in Africa. As a young organization, we are ready to hand over large responsibility for specific, well-defined work modules, with similar structure to a management consulting engagement. Ten prior Project Associates have had successful internships and played critical roles in the organization’s early development. Projects will be focused on developing and improving KOMAZA’s program model (as opposed to day-to-day operations, which are executed by our country staff). We have many projects for talented Project Associates. Examples include:
- Farmer & Field Staff Training and Management Tools. Improving our operational tools for training farmers on how to properly plant and maintain their tree farms. This involves training a hierarchy of Field Staff to disperse training to farmers and then to communicate progress and problems back up to our office-based management.
- Social Marketing. Developing a social marketing program to improve KOMAZA's ability to raise program awareness in target communities. This involves developing systems for securing the support from chiefs and village elders and developing an incentive-based farmer recruitment program.
- Environmental Research. Develop an environmental research program, including a comprehensive environmental risk assessment, mitigation, and response program. This will be a field-based research program in Kenya to better determine and improve the environmental impact of micro-Eucalyptus farms. This project should result in publications in peer-reviewed environmental/forestry journals.
- Forestry Experimentation. Expand on KOMAZA's best-practice planting methodologies by stablishing experimental field plots to evaluate the impact of different planting inputs and configurations. This involves recruiting and training farmers to help conduct this research on their farms, leasing land and hiring, training, and managing staff for KOMAZA-run experimental plots, and handling all logistics of input delivery and training for proper trial plot plantings and evaluation. This project should result in publications in peer-reviewed forestry journals.
- Market Research. Expand on KOMAZA's existing wood product market research by developing extensive vendor interviews and developing a purchase/sale diary for vendors to help us better track and understand local markets. This will involve developing research tools and managing field staff in executing the research project.
- Monitoring & Evaluation. Develop an annual, longitudinal monitoring program to supplement our current baseline monitoring surveys. This data will be integrated with our farmer-tracking database to clearly demonstrate the benefits our program has on our families.
- Financial Processes. Continue to develop and refine internal financial processes, including the production of detailed monthly data on actual expenses vs. budget across all budget line items. Once these systems are developed, work to gradually hand them off to office administrative staff. This work will be followed by a project to design and implement a wide variety of cost-cutting programs.
Qualifications
We are looking for somebody truly extraordinary for the Project Associate role to help us build an organization that we hope will become a major, worldwide NGO. This is an extremely competitive posting for a business/management-style position. We expect only 10% of applicants to make it to a phone interview. Therefore, please do not respond unless you fit these criteria:
- Top-performing undergraduate background, preferably at top-tier school (put GPA and test scores on resume)
- Project management skills including milestone and work plan ownership
- Strong analytical skills and toolkit (e.g. using Excel to build and manage a workplan)
- A willingness to commit to living in Africa for at least six months, 1-2 years preferred
- Work experience or internship in an elite management and generalist setting is preferred. Top-tier management consulting firm, or some kind of successful entrepreneurial experience a big plus (e.g., starting a field program in a developing country, leading a conference, starting a business). “Get it done”/implementation experience is greatly preferred over research experience—we need entrepreneurial, productive individuals who can bootstrap ideas into reality
- Essential skills: strong English is required; extraordinary patience is necessary (things move slowly here and can often be a bit frustrating from a Western perspective); happiness to work nights and weekends when necessary (we all work very hard to build an organization that will forever end extreme rural poverty)
- A good “start-up” personality that fits Africa well: Entrepreneurial, ambitious, independent; Structured thinker; Good goal-oriented communicator; Flexible; No ego or drama—we are all stable people who are fun to be around. We are looking for others that combine strong leadership skills with a humble approach to service
- Nice to have: Substantial work/volunteer experience in Africa/developing country is a big plus; Kiswahili is a plus (but not necessary or required); staff/student management experience a big plus; ability to laugh strongly desirable; knowledge of good cooking recipes and card games a plus
Compensation: Modest, but if you live frugally, enough to save a little money after living expenses.
Benefits: Very comprehensive health insurance (USA & international), basic immunizations, flights, visas, room and board—we have a middle-class house (with excellent security) for expatriate staff, which is fully serviced by a cook and house staff. One annual flight home provided—home trips may include some speaking and fundraising responsibilities. We can also connect you with a Swahili teacher and organize home stays for a fun cultural excursion.
Location: Kilifi is a beautiful seaside town (urban population ~40,000, with diverse cultures—Swahili, Arab, Italian, colonialists, and European clinical/lab-based/community-health researchers). When one needs to unwind after a long work week, there are ample opportunities for high-quality relaxation (swimming in the creek, reading on the beach, etc.). Fresh seafood, good meat, and locally grown vegetables make for excellent eating; Kilifi town also has the best Italian pizza for 100+ miles. Eat mangoes for breakfast and crab for dinner; go for a regular morning jog or join a local soccer team; catch up on reading—we work very hard, but we make up for it by occasionally relaxing very hard! Close proximity to Mombasa, Malindi, and other tourist destinations provide opportunities for travel and fun on weekends.
Career development: Quarterly management consulting-style career reviews, and significant investment in career development. This is excellent preparation for a future business or non-profit role. Although the post does not pay very well, KOMAZA’s founder (one of the most highly-awarded young social entrepreneurs) will invest significant time in your career development, and assist top performers with future placements in either the private sector or throughout the developing world.
To Apply
Email cover letter and resume to info@komaza.org (Subject line: “Project Associate Search, Idealist.org”). Project Associate positions are filled indefinitely and on a rolling basis. Serious applicants should therefore apply for this position as soon as possible, even if your earliest possible start date is several months away.
KOMAZA is a start-up social enterprise in Kenya that works with rural farm families living in chronic, extreme poverty. We are developing a novel microforestry social enterprise to create unprecedented cash income for our families. Our program will also have significant collateral benefits to the environment, by creating a sustainable supply of wood to curb rampant deforestation, driven by ravenous wood market demand. KOMAZA invests in each farm family to generate a permanent gain in farm income by unlocking the economic potential of commercial forestry. We provide farmers with a complete product/service package to generate maximum profits from tree farming: top-quality tree planting inputs on credit, comprehensive training to properly plant and maintain tree farms, and complete value capture services to access high-margin local and export markets.
Our program is designed to be usable by the extreme poor, and is especially well suited to families living on semi-arid, degraded land that is ill-suited for other agricultural interventions. Our goal is not simply to touch lives, but to create total life-change—a permanent end to extreme poverty. Over a single 8-year harvest cycle, our trees will return to each family 10-25X an average family’s annual income. Our ultimate goal is to create a profitable end to rural poverty. With an innovative social enterprise model, we expect to be profitable in the long-term; we currently anticipate each farm returning a 10-20% IRR to KOMAZA, and “profits” will be reinvested in serving new families.
KOMAZA has been operating full-time since June 2007. We currently serve 150 farm families (almost 1,000 children). Our target is to have scaled to over 3,000 families by the end of 2010, and over 15,000 families by the end of 2012. KOMAZA is one of the most externally-validated social enterprise start-ups, winning support from the highly-selective Draper Richards Foundation and Mulago Foundation’s Rainer Arnhold Program. More at www.komaza.org.
Job Description
We are seeking talented young professionals and/or exceptional recent university graduates with a career interest in business/innovation to serve in a position that combines both field and management experience in Africa. As a young organization, we are ready to hand over large responsibility for specific, well-defined work modules, with similar structure to a management consulting engagement. Ten prior Project Associates have had successful internships and played critical roles in the organization’s early development. Projects will be focused on developing and improving KOMAZA’s program model (as opposed to day-to-day operations, which are executed by our country staff). We have many projects for talented Project Associates. Examples include:
- Farmer & Field Staff Training and Management Tools. Improving our operational tools for training farmers on how to properly plant and maintain their tree farms. This involves training a hierarchy of Field Staff to disperse training to farmers and then to communicate progress and problems back up to our office-based management.
- Social Marketing. Developing a social marketing program to improve KOMAZA's ability to raise program awareness in target communities. This involves developing systems for securing the support from chiefs and village elders and developing an incentive-based farmer recruitment program.
- Environmental Research. Develop an environmental research program, including a comprehensive environmental risk assessment, mitigation, and response program. This will be a field-based research program in Kenya to better determine and improve the environmental impact of micro-Eucalyptus farms. This project should result in publications in peer-reviewed environmental/forestry journals.
- Forestry Experimentation. Expand on KOMAZA's best-practice planting methodologies by stablishing experimental field plots to evaluate the impact of different planting inputs and configurations. This involves recruiting and training farmers to help conduct this research on their farms, leasing land and hiring, training, and managing staff for KOMAZA-run experimental plots, and handling all logistics of input delivery and training for proper trial plot plantings and evaluation. This project should result in publications in peer-reviewed forestry journals.
- Market Research. Expand on KOMAZA's existing wood product market research by developing extensive vendor interviews and developing a purchase/sale diary for vendors to help us better track and understand local markets. This will involve developing research tools and managing field staff in executing the research project.
- Monitoring & Evaluation. Develop an annual, longitudinal monitoring program to supplement our current baseline monitoring surveys. This data will be integrated with our farmer-tracking database to clearly demonstrate the benefits our program has on our families.
- Financial Processes. Continue to develop and refine internal financial processes, including the production of detailed monthly data on actual expenses vs. budget across all budget line items. Once these systems are developed, work to gradually hand them off to office administrative staff. This work will be followed by a project to design and implement a wide variety of cost-cutting programs.
Qualifications
We are looking for somebody truly extraordinary for the Project Associate role to help us build an organization that we hope will become a major, worldwide NGO. This is an extremely competitive posting for a business/management-style position. We expect only 10% of applicants to make it to a phone interview. Therefore, please do not respond unless you fit these criteria:
- Top-performing undergraduate background, preferably at top-tier school (put GPA and test scores on resume)
- Project management skills including milestone and work plan ownership
- Strong analytical skills and toolkit (e.g. using Excel to build and manage a workplan)
- A willingness to commit to living in Africa for at least six months, 1-2 years preferred
- Work experience or internship in an elite management and generalist setting is preferred. Top-tier management consulting firm, or some kind of successful entrepreneurial experience a big plus (e.g., starting a field program in a developing country, leading a conference, starting a business). “Get it done”/implementation experience is greatly preferred over research experience—we need entrepreneurial, productive individuals who can bootstrap ideas into reality
- Essential skills: strong English is required; extraordinary patience is necessary (things move slowly here and can often be a bit frustrating from a Western perspective); happiness to work nights and weekends when necessary (we all work very hard to build an organization that will forever end extreme rural poverty)
- A good “start-up” personality that fits Africa well: Entrepreneurial, ambitious, independent; Structured thinker; Good goal-oriented communicator; Flexible; No ego or drama—we are all stable people who are fun to be around. We are looking for others that combine strong leadership skills with a humble approach to service
- Nice to have: Substantial work/volunteer experience in Africa/developing country is a big plus; Kiswahili is a plus (but not necessary or required); staff/student management experience a big plus; ability to laugh strongly desirable; knowledge of good cooking recipes and card games a plus
Compensation: Modest, but if you live frugally, enough to save a little money after living expenses.
Benefits: Very comprehensive health insurance (USA & international), basic immunizations, flights, visas, room and board—we have a middle-class house (with excellent security) for expatriate staff, which is fully serviced by a cook and house staff. One annual flight home provided—home trips may include some speaking and fundraising responsibilities. We can also connect you with a Swahili teacher and organize home stays for a fun cultural excursion.
Location: Kilifi is a beautiful seaside town (urban population ~40,000, with diverse cultures—Swahili, Arab, Italian, colonialists, and European clinical/lab-based/community-health researchers). When one needs to unwind after a long work week, there are ample opportunities for high-quality relaxation (swimming in the creek, reading on the beach, etc.). Fresh seafood, good meat, and locally grown vegetables make for excellent eating; Kilifi town also has the best Italian pizza for 100+ miles. Eat mangoes for breakfast and crab for dinner; go for a regular morning jog or join a local soccer team; catch up on reading—we work very hard, but we make up for it by occasionally relaxing very hard! Close proximity to Mombasa, Malindi, and other tourist destinations provide opportunities for travel and fun on weekends.
Career development: Quarterly management consulting-style career reviews, and significant investment in career development. This is excellent preparation for a future business or non-profit role. Although the post does not pay very well, KOMAZA’s founder (one of the most highly-awarded young social entrepreneurs) will invest significant time in your career development, and assist top performers with future placements in either the private sector or throughout the developing world.
To Apply
Email cover letter and resume to info@komaza.org (Subject line: “Project Associate Search, Idealist.org”). Project Associate positions are filled indefinitely and on a rolling basis. Serious applicants should therefore apply for this position as soon as possible, even if your earliest possible start date is several months away.
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