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Kenya Clean Water, Hygiene and Vegetable Garden in Six Rural Kenya Schools
Identified Needs: Additional rainwater collection, storage, filtering and handwashing. Washable period-kits for girls and vegetable gardens with stored gray water for irrigation.
How the Needs Will Be Met: Additional storage tanks will be delivered and connected to fascia boards and guttering that will be repaired or added where needed. Filters and girls period-kits will be delivered. WASH training will be provided. Garden and pond materials will be delivered with instruction for construction and operation.
Timeline: In year one, all materials and all construction will be completed. In year 2, monitoring by the Host Club will track progress and performance.
How Will Project Funds Be Used: All funds will be used for materials, labor, transport and contractor profit.
How the Host Club Will Be Involved: The Host Club has conducted the school community assessments. They will also monitor and report school progress and performance
Background: For a dozen years, a Rotary project together with a couple of key churches in Fort Collins and Aspen, Colorado have teamed to provide clean water systems and related knowledge to about 100 mostly rural and poor schools in the Meru, Isiolo and Nakuru regions of Kenya. These are schools that had no borehole and no rainwater harvesting. Water at the time of our involvement was either carried from some distance or was not potable or both. Our objective has been to improve school attendance and performance especially for girls by way of better health with less intestinal water-borne disease and education. This is a continuation of that work.
Project Overview
In brief, for those school communities who request our assistance and provide some in-kind help, we will build a rainwater harvest and storage system, filtering and hand-washing stations. This work is all performed by a trusted and experienced Kenyan contractor. The contractor is also an excellent communicator who educates the school children and families on the importance of water, sanitation and hygiene. We plan to collect the current attendance and school test scores as well as anecdotes about children's absences due to health problems. This will form a baseline for tracking the change in future attendance and performance that might be attributed to better WASH behaviors at the school.
We will distribute washable sanitary products made by a local Kenya womens' group for appropriately aged girls
A new part of this project is to help build a school vegetable garden and teach gardening-basics to students and faculty. Again, our Kenya contractor who grew-up on a farm will teach this course.
Project Detail Summary
At each school:
• Brief the head teacher about the project. Obtain the commitment (or not) of the head teacher and the school community to participate.
• Collect current attendance and school test scores as baseline data.
• Install 10K liter rainwater storage poly tanks. The number to be installed is based on number of students and climatic precipitation data.
• Install guttering and spouts from school buildings and connect to the 10k tanks
• Repair and reconnect any existing guttering and connect to the tanks
• Install micro-pore filters for drinking water. The number is computed at 1 filter for 25 students
• Install hand washing stations. The number is sized based on student population; one station per 50 students
• Construct a small surface water storage pond with a plastic liner to store gray water
• Provide a liner for small storage pond to be dug by the school. The pond will hold gray water and be used to irrigate a vegetable garden with fencing
• Provide vegetable seeds
• Train students, faculty and parents about WASH and rudimentary gardening
• Visit schools semi-annually to check on performance and retrain as necessary and report
• Collect and report attendance and school test scores annually for 2 years
Labor
A longtime native contractor for us (Isaac Soita) will design and manage the project using hired labor and school student and parent labor.
Project Management and execution locally provided by a trusted contractor we have used for 15 years on WASH projects.
Plans and Expectations
• When the rains come, the storage of additional water will improve water supply
• The water filters can be used with the stored rain water and even water from livestock tanks to improve water quality and reduce water-borne disease
• Grow a garden with gray water using the fencing keep smaller animals out
• In time, the students may be able to grow food of sufficient supply to sell with the profits used to improve learning at the school.
This project deliberately has a very simple design and construction with no moving parts and with durable construction materials. This design makes the project very sustainable without much intervention. The tanks are made of food safe polyethelene and will be white to keep the water cooler. The guttering is a durable poly material as are the pond liners, the buckets used for hand-washing and transporting water from storage to filtering. The feminine kits rate washable and reusable. All materials are sources locally except the filters which are from the USA and are supplied free or at a very low cost. Any repairs will be accomplished by the established school WASH Clubs with local funds.
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