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I am happy to share this report on the Student Movement for Real Change’s Kayafungo Water Project. To borrow a favorite phrase from one of our Kenyan partners: the project is kicking! We are on-track in implementing our grant from Rotary International, we are building great relationships with development agencies in the area, and—perhaps most importantly—the government is working hard to ensure that we will have a reliable source of water for our project.
I returned in mid-May from six weeks in Kenya working on the Kayafungo Water Project with Lily Muldoon, the Project Director from the Student Movement. The work was extremely challenging, but I am pleased to say that I accomplished all my goals and then some.
We are currently implementing a $40,000 grant from Rotary International to conduct health workshops and build latrines with handwashing stations. I never thought that I would spend so much time thinking about latrines! After spending weeks learning about the many different latrine designs (and even testing them… I can tell you that some designs are definitely better than others!), we chose a simple design that is most appropriate given the geography, culture and locally available resources. And here’s the best part: students are going to build them! We are currently designing a pilot project with the Mwabayanyundo Youth Polytechnic that would have the students provide the skilled labor (with instructors helping, of course), which could be a great way to get even more out of our project.
I’m proud to announce that SMRC will be working with the Muthaa Community Development Foundation (MCDF) to conduct the health and sanitation workshops. It is such a pleasure working with these guys. They are a youth-led NGO based in Nairobi that is staffed with extremely intelligent, capable and motivated health/capacity building experts. One of our major accomplishments of my time there was to conduct five focus groups in Kayafungo led by MCDF. The first focus group consisted of select community leaders and the other four were open to anyone — almost 200 people showed up to each!
One of the things that we spent a lot of time on was meeting with the major players in the Kaloleni District, where Kayafungo is located. There are actually a bunch of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and government agencies doing projects in the district, but none of the efforts are coordinated and the result is a confused system of disjointed efforts that doesn’t integrate into a coherent development plan. We are hoping that our relationships help to increase communication between the development players, and there are signs that we are succeeding: one of the best days I had there was a day-long conference with all the water stakeholders that identified critical projects and arranged to fund them.
Finally, we worked with the government at various levels to ensure that our project will be technically feasible. The Kenyan government is responsible for building a mainline to the large tank from which we will be building distribution lines. When I arrived, they had not yet begun this project and the tank might have sat dry indefinitely. After several meetings, the Coast Water Services Board (CWSB) is now prioritizing the construction of this mainline and already completed the engineering survey in the time since I left.
We also acted as a sort of lobbyist for the Kayafungo Community and everyone that would receive water from this tank. Due largely to our efforts Kayafungo’s Member of Parliament committed to releasing 20 million Kenyan Shillings from his discretionary funds for the construction of the necessary mainline. We also garnered an additional commitment from the Ministry of Water to provide the remaining 20 million Shillings. Both the Member of Parliament and the Ministry of Water were proud to participate in a Government-NGO partnership led entirely by young people—congratulations are due to everyone involved in the Student Movement! It is because of your good work that any of this is possible.
Our timeline for construction is ambitious, but the need for clean water is growing ever-more desperate; the drought in Kenya continues and the rainy season has been even lighter this year. The challenges are great: Kenya is still recovering from the period of political and social unrest and prices are rising drastically, making it difficult to achieve projects on a fixed budget. Nonetheless, we are consistently meeting or exceeding our goals and will continue to work until the people of Kayafungo have clean water.
Ryan Knight is Senior Advisor to the Student Movement for Real Change and a Research Associate at NERA Economic Consulting. He has worked on the Kayafungo Water Project since it began in 2006 and was a member of the Claremont Colleges chapter of the Student Movement for the four years he attended Pomona College. He now resides in Boston, and can be reached at ryan@studentmovementusa.org |
