Kenya Project Vol 5: Summary and into the future

After so much deliberation and hard work planning and fundraising for the project, the physical work seemed to fly by! If you are wondering how much we spent on our project then I am to outline the costs here and also look into the future.

Receipts from the hardware stores, we tried to collect receipts for as much as possible to be as transparent as we could.

Here is a itemised list of our spending for the water storage project.

1. Tanks – 72,500 shillings - £1002.20

2. Guttering and related fittings – 9,250 shillings -£65.05

3. Piping to feed drip system and the tank – 7,520 shillings - £52.89

4. Concrete base – 3,900 shillings - £27.42

5. Tools – 630 shillings - £4.43

6. Transport of materials – 8,500 shillings - £59.76

7. Local labour force donation – 9,300 shillings - £65.38

8. Transport of labour force – 9,100 shillings - £63.98

9. Purchase of their handmade jewellery – 3,600 shillings – £25.31

Total - £1,366

One thing you may be wondering about is the purchase of the handmade jewellery. We purchased some jewellery directly from the women's group to give to some donars. The money therefore went directly towards the women's activities and will help towards rescuing girls. The women really want to find a market for their jewellery so while we couldn't help with this (I did try!) we thought that it would give them some satisfaction if we bought some to take back to donars here in England.

Trying on the handmade products.

In total we fundraised £2888, we donated an additional £502.22 on Teule orphanage to assist them with building their school (which I will be writing a seperate blog post on) but this still left an underspend of £1019.36. We could either fit more tanks for the women or do something different with the money. After much deliberation and having several conversations with the Eduet Women and VSO, the international organisation with a base in neighbouring village Loitokitok, we decided that the most worthwhile use of the remaining balance was to save the money and put it towards a much bigger long term project - a borehole.

So yes, this project is not over. We have priced up a borehole from several local suppliers and with locals support and help for labour (which will cut costs significatly compared to hiring a company to do all the work), a borehole will cost approximately £10,000. We are 1/10 of the way there so have some work to do but I am sure that it is achievable.

Having visited the group over the course of our time in Kenya, I am sure that we are helping an amazing group of people. They are fiesty and passionate, determined to make a difference in their community and to help those in need. They want to put an end to FGM, to empower women and they will do it despite the challenges that they face. They take all ideas on board and are proactive in trying to improve their own lives. If we could build a borehole for the Eduet women, their water shortage problems would be almost over (this assumption is based on knowledge about other boreholes in the area which provide an amble supply year round). At present the water tanks that we have provided should enable the women to grow crops in the polytunnel and temporarily house around 8 girls at a time before finding them permanent homes. If we can build the borehole in the next few years then more and more girls can be rescued and educated which will have a fantastic impact on the community. The borehole would allow the women to grow even more crops to be as self sufficient as possible.

If the Eduet women were to sell more crops at the market this would raise more money for their activities. Other things that the want to save up enough money for are the purchase of a motorbike so that they can easily get around to different schools to educate young girls. At the minute they are walking to schools to give girls talks about their rights to try to empower them so a motorbike would allow them to travel to more areas. They would also like to purchase some cattle so that they could use the milk as a food source but also to sell for more profit. They did have some cattle but most had died in the dry season due to drought.

How can we ensure that the project is sustainable?

Yes, we are based far away from Kenya but we have Edward, our trusted friend from the Kenya Red Cross, who is going to keep checking in with the group to see how they are doing. We also brought Yvonne, the programme leader for VSO based in the area, to see what we had done on our final day. Yvonne has promised to send VSO volunteers once every few months to see how everything is going and will continue to show support.

Travelling back with Yvonne from VSO.

Everything that we did was based on the demands from the community, it was their ideas, and we just facilitated it through providing finance. So the locals were the driving force behind the project, not us. The locals were involved every step of the way in the building process so they know how the tanks and structures were put together so if anything breaks, they have the knowledge to fix it.

Time to celebrate team! Bottom Left to Right, Yvonne (programme leader for VSO), me, Ryan, Edward (Kenya Red Cross officer and the reason why we knew about the women's group), and Kelvin (our volunteer who travelled from Nairobi to help us).

Eduet Women's Group - we'll be back!