Most of the team are at a site on any given weekday, which is why a phone call reaches us faster than an email.
Staff profiles pending consent
As with the board, individual staff are named and photographed here only with their written consent. The roles below are real; the names go in before launch.
The roles
Executive Director
Day-to-day management, funding relationships, and representing the organisation to district authorities.
Programme lead
Site selection, monitoring protocol, and the final say on whether a site is ready to plant.
Field officers
The people who walk the bank, run the surveys, hold the conversations with households, and come back at six and twelve months.
Nursery coordinators
Attached to the community groups running the three nurseries. Seed sourcing, technique and quality.
Education coordinator
Teacher training, curriculum materials, and the school partnerships.
Finance and administration
Bookkeeping, audit preparation, and the compliance reporting the NGO Bureau requires.
How we hire
Field roles go to people from the catchment districts, in practice almost always. Someone who grew up beside this river has context that no induction provides, and a household is more candid with a neighbour than with a stranger from Kampala.
All roles are advertised. Where a trustee or staff member is connected to an applicant, that is declared and the person takes no part in the decision — the conflict of interest policy covers this and we apply it.
What a field officer's week actually looks like
- 1
Walking the bank
Surveys are done on foot at the waterline, not from a vehicle on the road above. A bank that looks intact from thirty metres up is routinely bare at the water's edge.
- 2
Sitting with households
Most of a buffer strip is agreed in conversation, on somebody's own ground, in Runyankole. The negotiation takes longer than the planting and decides whether the planting survives.
- 3
Planting days
Supervising species placement and spacing, and counting what actually went into the ground. That count is the number every later survival figure is measured against, so it is made carefully and before anyone leaves.
- 4
Six- and twelve-month returns
Going back to a stretch planted a year ago and counting what is still alive. It is the least popular part of the job and the only reason our survival figures mean anything.
- 5
Writing it up
Every visit produces a record the same day. A field note written three days later is a memory, and memories drift towards the outcome the writer was hoping for.
How the team is set up
The organisation is small and deliberately field-weighted. Most roles are outdoors for most of the week, and the office at Biharwe is where records get written up rather than where the work happens. That is also why a phone call reaches us faster than an email.
Field conversations happen in Runyankole. Monitoring records, reports and correspondence are in English. Anyone who is going to negotiate a buffer strip has to be able to do it in the language the household actually uses, which is the main reason field roles are filled from the catchment districts.
Everyone working in a school, or at a community session where children are present, is covered by the safeguarding policy and knows that the safeguarding lead is a trustee rather than a member of staff. Nobody photographs or quotes a person without asking first, in that person's own language, and consent can be withdrawn afterwards.
Questions people ask about the team
How many staff are there?
Fewer than people expect from the amount of ground covered. The number changes with the season, because a planting window needs more hands than the months between them; the establishment is set out in the annual accounts.
Are you volunteers?
Staff are paid. Volunteers come to planting days and to specific pieces of work, and are never used to fill a role that ought to be a job.
Do you use consultants?
Rarely, and only for work nobody on the team can do, such as an external audit or a specialist water analysis. Where a trustee or member of staff is connected to a supplier, that is declared and they take no part in the decision.
Who do I speak to about a specific site?
The programme lead, through the contact form or the office number. Field officers are usually at a site and out of signal for much of the working day.