A CALL TO KENYA
A Community Development Programme
Projects
PROJECT #1
FEED MY LAMBS
Help local people grow more food.
PROJECT #2
BE GOOD STEWARDS
Encouraging local people to conserve the reinforest and soil fertility.
PROJECT #3
HEAL THE SICK
Providing medical care to people unable to access it themselves.
PROJECT #4
TEACH THE CHILDREN
We have a small programme sponsoring children to attend school.
PROJECT #5
LIGHTEN THE BURDEN
Improving village infastructure to improve quality of life.
PROJECT #1
FEED MY LAMBS
Help local people grow more food.
PROJECT #2
BE GOOD STEWARDS
Encouraging local people to conserve the reinforest and soil fertility.
Soil and Fertility – shifting agriculture used to practised in this area when the population density was low, slashing and burning an area of cultivation and then moving to a new area after a couple of years to allow regeneration. Now the population has increased, land is more frequently farmed year after year. During the rainy season, the rainfall can be very intense, leaching nutrients from the soil and causing erosion of the topsoil.
With the use of contoured terracing and growing some permanent plants along the terraces, soil erosion can be reduced. Retention of some trees can protect the soil surface from the direct force of the rainfall, hold the soil against erosion with their strong root system and improve organic matter content because of leaf fall. We have also been experimenting with the addition of cattle manure and composted organic matter as soil additives. Long term retention of soil fertility is going to become an increasing problem as agricultural use of the land increases in this area.
Indigenous Tree Project – trees in the Shimba Hills are the natural vegetation of the land. Since the area has been settled, trees have been harvested both for timber and for the production of charcoal for the coastal town dwellers. New non-native trees have been planted as cash crops, such as coconut palms, cashew nuts, mangoes and citrus fruits. Also, fast growing softwood tree plantations are being planted for building poles, especially New Zealand Kasuarina pines and Blue Gum Eucalyptus trees. These leave the soils depleted after they are harvested. Gradually, the landscape has changed and there are some areas where very few of the original indigenous trees remain. Without the natural tree cover, the soil becomes vulnerable to erosion, particularly on steep slopes.
This shamba has not been cultivated intensively in the past and still retains many indigenous trees. We are trying to demonstrate that the trees can be retained along the terraces, between small cultivated areas and have a beneficial effect. We are also planting some of the indigenous species that are becoming uncommon in the area so that they can be preserved for the future. Many of them can be used for producing building poles, edible fruits and berries, rope and animal fodder during the dry season. The new planting areas will be used for teaching and demonstration purposes in the future and also as a seed bank for planting new trees in the surrounding area.
PROJECT #3
HEAL THE SICK
Providing medical care to people unable to access it themselves.
Local Help – local government clinics and hospitals are provided. However, the local clinics only have a limited amount of medicines available and hospitals are expensive to access because of transport costs. We have a small fund available to provide medical help on a limited basis to local people. Illnesses treated include malaria, septic wounds, typhoid, child birth complications, urine infections, chest complaints, TB and HIV complications.
Outreach Programme – we have a regular programme of medical outreaches, where a doctor and medical team are taken into more isolated villages on the border with Tanzania, in the Lunga Lunga region. They provide Primary Health care in villages that have poor access to medical care. The outreaches take place once or twice a year, depending on funding. They have been carried out in association with Dr Collins and the Savani Medical Centre in Likoni.
August 2010 Mafungoni supported by Soham Staploe Rotary Club
February 2011 Mafungoni follow-up for Bilharzia treatment, sponsored by MAST
September 2011 Kasameni sponsored by MAST
November 2012 Mafungoni sponsored by MAST
September 2013 Kasameni sponsored by MAST
February 2014 Mwabambarani sponsored by Soham Staploe Rotary Club
October 2014 To be confirmed sponsored by Soham Staploe Rotary Club
PROJECT #4
TEACH THE CHILDREN
We have a small programme sponsoring children to attend school.
This programme depends on funding as individuals express the desire to help a child to attend school. This project was started when 5 children received sponsorship for their school fees in 2010. Two boys, Alex and William, in Ukunda, and three girls, Sheila and Mary and Dellyqueen in Likoni were sponsored.
Alex and William: have continued to attend school in Ukunda over the four years. It has been a pleasure to see them develop into polite, kind boys who are good at helping to look after their own younger brother and other children in the community. They are not the top of their class but they try hard and are a pleasure to be around. Their parents are very pleased with the ethos of the school, which is run by a German organization.
Dellyqueen: started attending school in Likoni in 2010, which was a much better school than the previous local one she went to and she settled in well, improving her marks. She moved to Bungoma in Western Kenya with her family a year later and the sponsorship has continued, sending the money by M-pesa (a mobile phone banking system). The family send us receipts and reports by scanned e-mail attachments. Dellyqueen has struggled moving from school to school but seems to have settled in now and is getting better grades in her exams. She is now in Standard 6 and has two more years to complete her Primary school education.
Sheila and Mary: attended school in Likoni for three years and were doing well academically, particularly Mary who is a very bright student. Unfortunately, there was a problem and the family now make their own provision for the children. In 2014, two other girls have been sponsored in their place.
Margaret: is at the children’s home adjacent to a school in Likoni, due to the death of her mother from cancer. She is in the last year at the Primary school (Standard 8), taking her examinations in November, at the end of this academic year. It is good for her to have the stability of knowing that her fees have been paid so that she can concentrate on her studies without the worry of whether she will be able to complete her education or not.
Sipporah: is at a local government school near to where we are working. Although the children officially receive free government education, the schools levy several additional charges to the parents that make it difficult for them to afford sending their children to school. Sipporah’s parents have to pay towards the new roof of one of the classrooms, for tuition on Saturday mornings, for athletics, for an extra teacher funded by the parents and for her examinations each term. If any of the payments are not made, the child is sent home from school until they receive the money. Although the amounts are relatively small, some children are not able to attend school because of non-payment. The school also organize two or three educational trips during the year that children are expected to participate in, that also have to be paid for by the parents. Sipporah is in Standard 7 so she completes her Primary school education in November 2015.
Additional Funds:
We have received additional funds from other donors from time to time that have allowed us to help other students with their education. Sometimes this has been through the provision of text books, or a donation towards school fees. We have been able to fully sponsor one Secondary school student – Mbogo - who is the first in his family to attend High School. We have also assisted another student, Saidi, to obtain sponsorship for his final High School year from the Becken charity in Isleham. A third High School student, Neema, is sponsored by a group of friends from our church.
Kenya will only be able to develop if its people are educated and learn new skills and ideas. These children will be the new generation of workers and need to be able to help the country be competitive in the modern world. Too many people are illiterate in our area, unable to read and write, let alone use a computer. In an impoverished area, sponsorship is the only way that some children get the opportunity to attend school. It will be so important for their future and the future of Kenya itself.
PROJECT #5
LIGHTEN THE BURDEN
Improving village infastructure to improve quality of life.
Road improvements – the village depends on local mud roads for transportation for themselves, mainly by hired motorbikes and transportation of goods to market by ‘Canter’ lorries. The roads are unimproved and have not been adopted by the government. During the rainy season they become muddy and almost impassable in places. It is up to the local community to repair ditches, bridges and hollows eroded by the rain. We have been able to help provide labour to repair roads locally and have also installed a culvert bridge close to the shamba where there was repeated flooding. Further improvements are urgently needed, particularly to another local bridge.
A well – we have been given funding to dig a well for the community. Currently, water has to be collected from a local spring during the dry season, at the top of a steep muddy hill. Excavate has started on the well, but has stopped at the moment, during the rainy season.
© 2016 by Dare2Share
Many of our neighbours are poor subsistence farmers, finding it hard to provide enough food to feed their families, using hand held tools to cultivate the land. This project aims to meet them at their point of need and help them to grow more food at a sustainable level.
Ploughing – using oxen, we provide an affordable ploughing service for local people. This allows them to cultivate a larger area of land than is possible using a hoe.
Plough Sharing – with the local church, we can identify those with greater needs and help them further. This year, we have been able to help:
Examples of hardships:
* a young family where the father suffered a small stroke and is finding it hard to cultivate the land,
* a large family where the father has lost his fingers and toes through an infection and is unable to work the land,
* a family where the father has an addiction and spends any cash outside the home.
In each case, we have ploughed half an acre of land, provided certified seed and DAP fertilizer for planting, fertilizer for top dressing and insecticide, together with labour to do each operation. The work aims to provide at least 4 bags of maize for each family to feed them until the next harvest. It is also a demonstration of good farming practice that they can copy in the future.
* fertilizer for the Village – it is difficult to grow good maize without the use of inorganic fertilizers because of the high rainfall, leaching the nutrients from the soil. The fertilizer is expensive but it is possible to obtain government subsidized fertilizer in Kenya. Unfortunately, the process is difficult for many of the villagers. We have collected together the orders for fertilizer from the village, completed the paperwork for each person, obtained signatures from the Chief and Agricultural Officer in Shimba Hills town and then organized for the transportation of the 50kg sacks from Mombasa port to the village. The whole process is time consuming and involves travelling from place to place, which is difficult if you have no transport and even more difficult if you are unable to read or write. This year, we were able to bring over 100 bags to more than 50 households in the community and have them available for collection from our store. For our workers, we are able to microfinance the purchase, which they can pay back from their wages. Without this help, they would be unable to afford to buy the fertilizer.
Teaching and improving the way we do farming:
* of crops:
leading by example, trying to be a centre of excellence, growing crops in the best way possible. This is a demonstration to our boys, working with us and also showing the neighbours what is possible
by carrying out trials on our demonstration field to show the difference between various farming methods. These can then be used as a teaching resource for seminars and open days that local farmers can attend.
* of animals:
by good standards of animal husbandry, so that our zebu oxen are strong and healthy and show how the bulls can grow.
by good nutrition of the dairy cattle to boost milk production from the local zebu cattle. Any surplus milk will be given to the neighbouring childrens’ home.
© 2016 by Dare2Share
© 2016 by Dare2Share