Project News

SHEP training targeting private company conducted!

SHEP training was held at Kisii County for 3.5 days from June 8th to 11th, 2021. The target is a private company called Powerhive, which is engaged in an off-grid electricity generation and distribution business for rural area. The programme included lectures on market survey & analysis, crop selection, and crop planting calendar making for a total of eight participants, including the SHEP trainers newly hired to implement SHEP by the company.

This collaboration started from being contacted by Toyota Tsusho, which invests in Powerhive. Through Powerhive, Toyota Tsusho has been working not only delivering electricity to non-electrified areas but also proposing and supporting activities to increasing income of people which enables them to use electricity. Then, Toyota Tsusho got interested in the SHEP approach for farming as a business since most of their clients are small scale farmers, requested the project for cooperation, and the training was realized.

For preparing the training, the project briefed what are needed to the Powerhive staff through online meeting, and they did preparation such as pre-meeting with market stakeholders and arrangement of the training venue. The company has staff who worked for the county government, and the program went smoothly on the day of the training. In the market survey exercise, there were surprises such as "I didn't expect the sellers to share information generously" and "I didn't know that the green onions at the market are supplied from outside the county."

In addition, it was a great learning opportunity for the project that the speed from planning to implementation of private companies and it is possible to customize the SHEP Approach based on the needs of a partner organization.

The Powerhive staff who participated in the training will provide training such as market survey to farmers in their target area!

The project will continue to seek cooperation with educational institutions and NGOs in addition to the Powerhive!

Practice of market survey in the training

Participant made a presentation on the findings of market survey

Power generation and storage facility by solar power generation of Powerhive