Members of Nuru International, a humanitarian grassroots organization working to eradicate extreme poverty in a sustainable manner, brought their traveling campaign to ASU’s Tempe campus on Thursday.

Nuru’s mission is to empower individuals living in rural areas to lift themselves out of extreme poverty to build thriving communities by attacking five related issues: agriculture, water and sanitation, health care, education and community economic development.

“Poverty is a complex issue, so we need to work holistically to attack it,” Nuru tour coordinator Tiffany Newcomb said. “If we can attack this issue from every angle, we can completely solve it.”

Nuru’s methods are unique when compared to other nonprofit organizations for two reasons, she said.

First, Nuru has a five-year exit plan for all communities in order to prevent dependency and limit Western influence.

Second, when Nuru enters a new community, teams of three to five experts spend several months listening to the residents and helping them develop solutions that suit the individual community, tour team member Lisa Hough said.

“These are really smart people, they just need the opportunity to show it and someone to show them how to raise themselves up,” Hough said.

Members of the audience were drawn in by the approach of creating leaders within the communities and allowing them to control the situation, she said.

“No one wants to be told what to do, myself included,” political science junior Katie Bero said. “Also, you only know what’s best for you, so I think it’s more effective than other groups that go in and say ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ It gives them a sense they are acting to better their own lives.”

Limited access to sanitary water is a widespread problem in rural villages like Kuria, Kenya, where Nuru is currently working.

Young girls make multiple trips a day to far away water holes and wells, often to retrieve unsanitary water for their families, the team said.

Because each trip can take several hours, these children are prevented from attending school and therefore are uneducated, limiting their options for the rest of their lives, they said.

“This lack of options leads people to make increasingly desperate choices,” Newcomb said. “Sometimes it’s just the leg up that these people need to improve their lives, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Nuru is promoting awareness and raising money to drill clean wells close to schools through its “Be Hope to Her” campaign, which the tour team said it hopes to bring to ASU in April.

Participants in “Be Hope for Her” recruit sponsors and carry five-gallon buckets of water on their heads, similar to how young women in impoverished countries do every day, Hough said.

“We just want to give people a small glimpse of what it’s like to be in extreme poverty,” she said.

Newcomb said participating in the event last year deeply affected her.

“I never knew five gallons of water could change your life,” she said. “I only experienced it for a brief a amount of time, but it really made me realize, these women are strong.”

By continuing to raise awareness through events like “Be Hope for Her” and encouraging rural community leaders to scale their new knowledge outward to neighboring communities, Nuru founder Jake Harriman said extreme poverty can be eradicated within this generation’s lifetime.

As Harriman put it in a video shown during the presentation on Thursday: “I believe our civilization is at a crossroads. Either we continue destroying each other, or we make a connection. The only choice is to … end extreme poverty.”

Reach the reporter at keshoult@asu.edu