For review - Friendly Water for the World November 2021 newsletter

- Tweet0
- 0
- Pin It 0
- 0
- Subscribe to RSS
Subscribe

Subject: For review - Friendly Water for the World November 2021 newsletter

November 2021 Issue

Hi Friend,

Four years ago, I joined Friendly Water for the World as a contributor and project volunteer. I was dazzled by the opportunity to partner with a successful international NGO (non-governmental organization) that transforms villages around the world and is based just a few miles from where I live. Even before COVID-19, the organization was meeting new challenges, evaluating past projects, and starting to create a new model of community engagement and program development. I wanted to invest more in this work and two years ago accepted an invitation to join the Board of Directors.

During my time with the organization, Friendly Water for the World has transformed from offering one technology, shared through a single community training event, to investing in the whole village through long-term relationship building and seven different programs. This new model wouldn’t be possible without effective partners and partnerships.

Evaluating our past work helped reveal what we seek in a partner. We now know that multiple partners are needed for every program and that we must enable them to be accountable for their work. Each partner is equally important and we must bring them all together as one team to invest in people, village by village. Partners are our greatest asset, and this work wouldn’t be successful without them.

I’m grateful for all that we have learned over the years, and for the new processes and partnerships born from them. I’m confident that the time and donations I contribute each year are being invested in the best ways possible to support our partners, trainers, and leaders. Thank you so much for being so supportive of our work.

Danny Stusser

Board Member

Our Partners

Last year we shared the 5 most valuable lessons we have learned from 10 years of community development work. Read it and you will discover that we believe our greatest asset is our partners. Our partners have deep knowledge of the local environment. They have expertise in their own field. And they have proven experience building solutions with communities. Not to mention that they often speak the same language, come from or are familiar with the culture, and can answer questions we never thought to ask.

We discover partners through serendipity, friends, mutual contacts, or program requests-for-proposals. What binds us together is not just the work, but shared values and a desire to change the way things have always been done. It takes sustainable infrastructure that spans many services and utilities to transform a village. That is work we can only accomplish with partners and partnerships.

SOME OF OUR PARTNERS

Transforming Communities for Social Change
Makiga Engineering
The University of Buffalo
Friends of Monze
Zambia Women and Girls Foundation
Kakamega County Government
Matsakha Development Group
Rotary organizations
Friends United Meeting
Simwatachela Sustainable Agricultural & Arts Program
Kenyan National Ministries
People for Progress in India
Charles & Mary Ann Hosking

There are at least six different kinds of partners with which we engage. Let's take a look at an example of each.

Local Partners

If you have been following our work for the past year, you may know this story well. In October of 2020, 100 members of the Matsakha community met with us for a 3-day Community Engagement event. At the end of that event, leaders for a new Matsakha Development Group (MDG) had been nominated by their peers.

They were representatives of the community and in some ways, pioneers. Never before had the community met formally with an external nonprofit organization like Friendly Water for the World. Like all of our local partners, they are all members of the community, know the local area well, are trained and equipped in the programs we are building together, and are accountable for scaling the work.

MDG is led by Alfred Muyumba and now has 24 members. They have made and sold over

4,000 liters of Meta soap through a Good Hygiene program, pressed 15,000 curved Interlocking Stabilized Soil Bricks as part of the Building Better program, and just accomplished two goals of our Water Security program, the construction of 25,000-liter rainwater catchment tanks #1 and #2 at Matsakha Primary School.

Community Partners

Zambia Women and Girls Foundation (ZaWGF) is a registered Non-Government Organization based in Monze, Zambia. They are led by Charles Dinda and affiliated with the Wales-based Quaker organization, Friends of Monze. ZaWGF works with the local government and other groups to build schools, make sustainable gardens, drill borehole wells for water, and teach menstrual hygiene and women's legal rights.

As a community partner, ZaWGF helped us to build three programs with the local Monze community in the spring of 2020. They made connections, located training sites, helped organize timelines, and shared information about the local people and area.

Their team was then able to use the training and equipment from one of those programs (Better Building) to construct their newest school in Mungolo with Interlocking Stabilized Soil Presses and Bricks. Most recently, several of their team members facilitated our 3-day Community Engagement event with 87 people from the village of Munamoomba.

Training Partners

Our Building Better programs have produced tens of thousands of bricks over the past year. Not just any bricks of course, Interlocking Stabilized Soil Bricks. These bricks are pressed, not fired, which means they protect the environment from deforestation by eliminating the need for wood fuel. They can also be built on-site, require less mortar for construction, and are uniform and attractive. Our bricks are made with presses from Makiga Engineering, an equipment and construction company based in Kenya.

We have purchased many presses from Makiga. The company has provided training, best practices, and use-case examples for different applications. Makiga was there in Kambiri as we built our first curved-brick rainwater catchment tank. Their input helped us create engineering drawings for the tanks that were ultimately approved by three Kakamega County government ministries.

A training partner shares knowledge about our program(s) and/or provides equipment and training for one of our technologies. They are skilled and understand how technologies we use must be customized to each unique village.

Program Partners

Program partners are advocates. They stand behind the work and with the people. Perhaps no group is a better example than local government. We partner with chiefs and assistant chiefs, ministry heads and front-line workers. Government program partners share a broad perspective. They have data and analysis, document best practices, and seek the best for their constituents.

Earlier this year, membes of the County Government of Kakamega (Kenya) worked with MDG to apply and be approved for the Kenyan Bureau of Standards certification for their Meta soap. The Minister of Trade, Industrialization, and Tourism even had some suggestions to make the soap sell better, including different bottles and better labels.

In September, George Michaels Mbakahya Ph.D., the head of the Industrialization Department joined us for our montly Chat. Mr. Mbakahya talked about his role in helping to scale small businesses and products like Meta. He noted how important it was for the government to consult with and help nuture small organizations like MDG.

Technology Partners

This is a kind of rocket stove (under construction). It is a special kind of clean-cooking, super-hot stove. These stoves use a narrow inlet and small combustion chamber to efficiently burn small-diameter fuel with little to no pollution. Rocket stoves are not only environmentally friendly, they save lives by reducing the fumes that (mostly) women breath, and eliminate the open three-stone fires in which children often fall into and scar themselves.

This particular stove is a test (that's one reason it is not using our Interlocking Stabilized Soil Bricks). We don't know yet if this stove is the right design for this home and this community. Which is why we test everything.

The stove is built by a local partner in Kambiri, Kenya. We have also started conversations with the University of Washington and the Burn Design Lab to test a completely different kind of rocket stove. This other version could be fabricated locally or at a factory. We may use both designs or neither in future programs, but we rely on the expertise of both local artisans and a range of experts to help us deploy the right technology.

Mission Partners

We are on a mission to transform the villages of the world. A village is usually a small group of people, often self-contained, and frequently isolated. In many ways that describes the environment that our partner Binyamin Christy discovered at Barabanki Prison last year. There, prisoners routinely became ill from waterborne illnesses. Already that year, two children (the building housed 18 children of prisoners) under the age of five had died due to diarrhea and vomiting.

Binyamin visited the prison for a day and demonstrated BioSand Water Filters. He also shared important information about sanitation and hygiene. Later, he donated two filters to the prison and followed up on his visit. His work is supported by another mission partner, Global Helps Network. As mission partners, we all share a view of the world we would like to create and then inspire the passion to create it.

Together, these groups of people form an inspiring team. We continuously seek to grow the team, expand our network, and find new ways to build partnership and community.

Congratulations

Please join us in warmly congratulating Friendly Water for the World board member and co-founder David Albert for being awarded the 2021 Jamnalal Bajaj International Award for Promoting Gandhian Values Outside India.

The award is made for promoting peace and harmony through the application of Gandhian philosophy of truth and non-violence, ending exploitation in any form

through Constructive Programmes, and innovative work to promote Gandhian values by awakening moral conscience and fostering community self-reliance.

The award is presented by the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation. The foundation was started in 1977 to award those women and men involved at the grassroots level, who are committed to inclusive development, working in line with Mahatma Gandhi’s constructive work program and who have taken a vow to selflessly serve the people, their community and nation, at large.

Former International Award winners include Clayborne Carson, Desmond Tutu, and Charles Walker.

In Brief

>> Register for Built To Last, our final Chat of the year.

>> Peter Kibet, the Head Teacher for Matsakha Primary School is creating a legacy.

>> Save the dates - November 29th through December 5th is Build Week.

>> Your next Build is underway in Munamoomba, Zambia.

>> Did you miss our last Chat? The Chat about our partners is now available to watch.

>> Our next board meeting will be held on Tuesday, November 16th at 4:30. Register here.

>> Write a review to promote our programs and help us stay top rated! If you appreciate our work, please let us know at https://greatnonprofits.org/.

>> Have a question or suggestion? Send an email to will@friendlywater.org.

Please share our work and invite others to join our mission.

FRIENDLY WATER FOR THE WORLD

We are on a mission to transform the villages of the world.

https://friendlywater.org

Subscribe

Subject: For review - Friendly Water for the World November 2021 newsletter