Local clean drinking water should be seen as a necessity to life. Many clean water charities help to provide this but often, once they have installed a pump, it breaks down never to be used again. We have two clean water projects in Kenya that help to provide long-term sustainable clean drinking water to many thousands of people.
Repairing other charities’ hand pumps.
There are over 32,000 hand pumps in Kenya, around 30% are broken and non-functional. Each year, we restore 200 – 300 and offer training to the local communities on how to maintain them. As well as providing access to groundwater, the object of the project is to keep the hand pumps working for the next 10 years and not just until the next breakdown. Each repair costs around £200 -£800, depending upon the resources required for the repair. Some are cheap to repair, just requiring a few replacement parts whereas others need a new handpump and possibly work on the well or borehole. Typically, around 50 – 100 families rely on the water from each hand pump, along with any neighbouring schools and clinics. Repairing these pumps benefits more than 60,000 people each year. By the end of 2020, we have repaired more than 1,200 hand pumps. These repaired pumps will help more than 300,000 people, including schools, clinics and villages. The long term average cost per user of refurbishing a pump is around £1 – so to help 10,000 people costs around £10,000 ($14,000).
We split Kenya into 3 separate areas for pump repairs. You can read the Feb 2016 progress report from one of the areas here.
Funding for the hand pump repair project during 2021 will be from 3 sources:
A legacy from David Wilson
Funding from the Eagle Foundation
Funding from an anonymous donor in Kenya.
With more funding, we can repair more pumps
Turning sunlight into food
We are drilling 5 deep boreholes around the community and our school in Olepolos. Each bore-hole will be fitted with a solar powered pump capable of producing about 20,000L per day. The water will be used for drinking and for supplying a 1 acre agriculture plot. This plot will be split into 80-100 ‘allotment type’ smaller plots used by the poorest to grow food all year round. The project will lift 80 families out of poverty, provide food for their children and families and provide a small income. To cover the cost of ongoing maintenance, a small charge will be levied for each plot holder.
Benefits of local clean water.
The benefits of clean water are obvious; less disease and in some cases death. In the Maasai areas, dirty drinking water is the norm. It is the women and young girls’ role to fetch the water. A typical water container is 20L (20 Kgms) and this may be carried up to 7-8 miles each way, or 14-16 miles total. A girl who has the job of fetching water from 7 miles away will not have any time to attend school. There is a high correlation between closeness of water and school attendance for girls.
Osiligi’s intention, as a clean water charity, is to provide a network of clean springs, boreholes or wells fitted with hand pumps.
Turning sunlight into water
One of the Charity’s early projects was the building of 2 deep solar powered bore-holes, one at Osiligi Obaya school and the other about 5km from it. The school bore-hole is 160m deep (500′) and 4,000-12,000 litre are pumped each day just using the power of the sun. The bore-hole supplies the school and local community. The greatest need for water is during the hot, sunny dry season; the time when the solar powered pump gives the greatest water. The school bore-hole has allowed the school to grow about half its food for the children’s mid day lunch. More details on the bore-hole project here.
The other bore-hole is 180m deep and provides water to the community and a 1 acre vegetable growing plot. The plot is split into 80 allotments for the poorest in the community to grow food. Just using the power of the sun, the solar pump can provide up to 20,000L per day.
