EDGE5

11/06/2026

The most impressive community programs I've seen are usually the first ones to fail.

Here's why.

Mining CSR programs are designed to look like results.

Multiple garden beds.
Diverse crop species.
Integrated livestock.
Water infrastructure.
Demonstration plots.

It photographs well.
It reports well.
It satisfies audit requirements.

Then the field team steps back.

And the household faces reality:
too many beds to water,
too many animals to feed,
too much complexity to maintain without guidance.

So they stop.
Rationally.

Because the system was built beyond what daily life can sustain.

Overdesign is not ambition.
It is miscalculation.

One bed that works for five years is worth more than ten beds that collapse in eighteen months.

The measure of a well-designed program is not how it looks at handover.
It is what is still functioning three years later.

Greg Knibbs
EDGE5
Post-Handover Viability Series — Book 3

25/05/2026

The household reality your program is probably ignoring

There is a simple test for whether a community food system will survive after you leave.

Can a household maintain it in under 20 minutes a day?

If yes — it has a chance.
If no — it will be abandoned.

Not eventually.
Quickly.

Women in most communities around active operations already carry:
— water collection
— firewood
— childcare
— cooking
— cleaning
— household income work

When your CSR program adds a food garden, you are adding to that load.

If the system is close to the kitchen, on the daily walking path,
manageable in under 20 minutes — it survives.

If it requires dedicated trips, coordination, or more than one person —
it collapses when your field team stops visiting.

The question to ask before any community food system is approved:

Can one person maintain this in 20 minutes a day during the dry season?

If the answer is no, the design is wrong.
Not the community.

Greg Knibbs
EDGE5
Post-Handover Viability Series — Book 3

13/05/2026

Before any community system gets built around an active operation,
one question should be asked.

Almost never is.

Is the household system stable enough to receive this?

Food security programs built before basic water access is secured get abandoned.
Livelihood programs introduced before household labour is stable collapse under their own weight.
Training delivered before people have capacity to apply it disappears within a season.

This is the sequencing failure.
And it is endemic.

The correct sequence is unglamorous:

1. Water first — reduce daily burden before adding anything
2. Zone 1 food stability — small, daily-use systems within arm's reach
3. Labour headroom — only expand when capacity allows
4. Then and only then — complexity, scale, income generation

Skipping this sequence doesn't just waste program budget.

It damages community trust in the organisation that built the system that failed.

That trust is hard to rebuild at closure.

Greg Knibbs
EDGE5
Post-Handover Viability Series — Book 2

26/04/2026

A community program is designed. Delivered. Reported. Audited. Passed.

Eighteen months after handover — it's gone.

The audit didn't catch it.

Because audits measure delivery, not survival.

They measure:
— Were the gardens planted? ✓
— Was the training delivered? ✓
— Was the infrastructure installed? ✓

They don't measure:
— Can this function in the dry season without external input?
— Is the labour demand manageable within real household capacity?
— Has design authority transferred — or just techniques?

These are survivability questions.
They require a different test.

EDGE5 calls it a stress test.
Running a system against post-handover reality before it's built —
not after it's failed.

The program that passes an audit but fails a stress test
is a liability in waiting.

Greg Knibbs
EDGE5
Post-Handover Viability Series — Book 1

08/04/2026

Most systems fail after handover.

They are built.
They are delivered.
Then they quietly stop functioning.

Not because people don’t care.
But because systems are designed beyond real conditions:
• water
• labour
• time
• daily use

EDGE5 focuses on one outcome:

Systems that function after delivery.

This means:
• designing for the worst month, not the best
• placing systems inside daily life, not outside it
• reducing labour, not increasing it
• building capacity before expansion

If a system cannot function without ongoing support,
it is not a success.

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