When the paved road gave way to red-brown dirt and our Toyota started to bounce around more, Daniele and I knew we had almost made it to meet with a farmers’ cooperative in Kiambu county, Kenya. We were extremely excited but also somewhat worried what farmers would think about the smartphone application we had worked on for the past four months. The moment of truth had arrived.

Climate change is a major challenge for smallholder farmers in developing countries and resilience is one of the key approaches to tackle climate change’s negative effects. Funding and interest for measuring and building climate change resilience have recently increased within the development sector. However, measuring resilience as a step towards improving livelihoods is still difficult and it is only a first step. We wanted to go one step further and bring together resilience measurements with existing solutions and local knowledge to empower farmers. Using a 5-day Google Venture “Design Sprint” methodology, we created a theory of change, digital mock-up of a mobile app and tested it with development practitioners. The feedback we received was positive, so much so, that we are now working on a prototype and plan to test it with farmers in a developing country in the next few months.