Friendly Water for the World June 2021 newsletter

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Subject: Friendly Water for the World June 2021 newsletter

Welcome to the June issue of our monthly newsletter.

We have a lot to share this month, but we want to make sure you don't miss the invitation to a very special Chat at the end of the month. We will soon be launching a big new program in Matsakha, Kenya that will provide one million liters of Water Security for the community. We have already co-created with the community successful Good Hygiene and Building Better programs. How do we go about turning those successes into something bigger? And how did we get this far? Make sure you join us for our final-Friday Chat to learn all about it.

In our newsletter this month you can read about:

Our Vision Comes Into Focus
Matsakha Build
Kambiri Build
Bukobero Build
2020 Annual Report
Chat About One Million Liters Of Water Security
June 15th Board Of Directors Meeting

If you have any suggestions on how to improve our monthly newsletter or have ideas for stories to include, please contact will@friendlywater.org.

Until our next Chat, our next newsletter, or whenever we are fortunate enough to see each other again. Please be safe and kind to others.

-Will, on behalf of our community of staff, volunteers, and supporters

Our Vision Comes Into Focus

"People able to live healthy lives and free to plan for the future."

Last month we shared our new mission - "Friendly Water for the World trains and equips communities in village-scale technologies to safeguard, conserve, and expand essential resources." We developed that mission hand-in-hand with both the values we hold close and the vision to which we seek to empower people worldwide to achieve. Our new vision reinforces our belief in a better future of healthy, self-sustaining, and empowered communities. And it helps to focus our work on ensuring people are both able and free to grow and thrive in the future that they choose.

Matsakha Build

Good Hygiene Program

Last month we shared the continued progress of Matsakha Development Group (MDG), an organization co-founded by Friendly Water for the World during our Matsakha Community Engagement, making and selling almost 2,000 liters of soap since January. In May, the team received more great news:

Meta Soap is now certified by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) as a locally manufactured product!

To achieve the certification, MDG with help from our community-based partner, Transforming Communities for Social Change, supplied KEBS with quantities of Meta Soap that was then tested and evaluated to ensure it met national standards and specifications. The soap passed inspection with flying colors. The team was grateful to be guided in the certification process by the Head of Industrialization in Kakamega County, George Michaels Mbakaya, who works closely with all up-and-coming local entrepreneurs.

Acquiring the certification means that Meta Soap can officially be sold in stores or markets anywhere in Kenya.

This is a picture of a public store in the Matsakha market.

If you were to venture up and down the main street of the Matsakha market last week you would find lots of hand-washing stations equipped with MDG Meta Soap.

In 2020, the Kenyan government passed Public Health Rules legislation designed to combat Covid-19. During a declared restriction period, every store must provide at their business location or entrance to their premises, a handwashing station with soap and water or an alcohol-based sanitizer.

During the last couple of months, Kenya has been coping with its third wave of covid. As a result, stores have been providing their required hand-washing stations - and buying Meta Soap for the local community to use. Thanks to the hard work of the MDG production and marketing teams, the community of Matsakha is better prepared to face the still active challenge of Covid-19.

Building Better Program

Mr. Alfred Muyuma, Chairperson of MDG, is working hard with his team to sift murram

(lateritic subsoil) for the more than 5902 curved Interlocking Stabilized Soil Bricks (ISSB) they have made for future rainwater catchment tanks (join our Chat to learn more!) at local Matsakha schools. It took them about three weeks to press all the bricks, a little longer than planned because it's the rainy season in Western Kenya. The bricks will probably require another couple of weeks to cure.

Thanks to the generosity of two local schools, MDG has been pressing bricks directly on the school grounds where the future rainwater catchment tanks will be built. This can easily be done because our bricks don't require building kilns all over Kenya. Just pack up the press and move it to another location like Matsakha Primary School.

The bricks were pressed while the students were out of school. Then we were offered an unused room to store them until it is time to build the tanks. Everyone is getting an education in making better bricks while the bricks help to make a better school.

Kambiri Build

Building Better Program

In September 2020, we purchased a (straight brick) ISSB press for Eric Lijodi, our Africa Programs Manager, and his team to make bricks in Kambiri (near our Kakamega Build Center). Lots of bricks. By purchasing our own press, Eric and his team could test different materials and methods, like which kind of murram to use, and how the environment affects brick curing.

Purchasing and using our own press has also enabled us to test a new kind of Building Better Program in Kambiri. By acquiring murram, managing a team, pressing our own bricks, and selling them directly to people and organizations, we can invest directly in the infrastructure of the community. We can also control the quality of the bricks and test everything we do.

The program is already succeeding. We have orders for 7,000 bricks and are now investigating different ways to market the bricks, accept payment, and potentially utilize micro-financing.

Bukobero Build

We are hosting ongoing discussions with representatives for the Bukobero Community Health Center in the Bududa District of eastern Uganda to create a Build with multiple programs. Bukobero has a population of more than 45,000 residents, 80% of whom are subsistence farmers with limited and inconsistent access to essential resources. The Center is located in the foothills of Mt Elgon in one of Uganda’s poorest regions. In 2010 a mudslide swept away their health center and it was never rebuilt.

We have received a Community Survey and are now discussing opportunities with their international team of partners including Sheila Hosner, Teresa Walker, David Wamuwaya, and Fred Peter Mutsaka. Work for the Build has funding from the University District Rotary Club in Seattle, WA, and is in partnership with the Rotary Club of Mbale.

The Bukobero team is interested in Building Better and other programs that would help them rebuild the Health Center and expand opportunities for the community.

2020 Annual Report

We are very happy to share with you our first-ever Annual Report. It is a snapshot of our work last year and a continuing chapter in our transformation from project-driven technology training to co-created and community-led program management designed to secure, conserve, and expand essential resources.

>> Read the report

Chat About One Million Liters Of Water Security

We are embarking on our largest Water Security program ever – installing one million liters of rainwater catchment tank capacity at schools in Matsaka, Kenya. A big program like this is made possible by building upon many small successes.

As we start to share more details about this program, we want to take a moment to acknowledge all the things we have recently accomplished together to make the effort possible. Join us to hear about building trusted relationships, making more than 20,000 bricks, selling 2,000 liters of Meta Soap, and the many small achievements behind them.

>> Register for the Chat

They say every brick has a story to tell. Well, we have a new story to tell about bricks. And building. For millennia, people have been using dried, compressed, and fired bricks to build. Bricks that didn’t last. Buildings that fell apart. Now there is a new brick. And with it, new opportunities to build sustainably, for less money and less harm to the environment.

Last year our partners built a school with these bricks. Last month we built a rainwater catchment tank. What will people build next? Watch our Chat to hear how we transformed Interlocking Stabilized Soil Bricks into a Building Better program.

>> Watch the Chat about building better

June Board Meeting

The Friendly Water for the World Board Meeting is OPEN to the public.

On Tuesday, June 15th at 4:30pm, we will be hosting our next meeting online again with a Zoom call. We want everyone to have the opportunity to participate, especially now when most of us are physically distancing at home. To join us, register below. After registering you'll be sent an email with a link to the meeting. If you don't see the email, please check your SPAM folder. If you find it in your SPAM folder, please make sure that in your email client you identify the email as 'Not SPAM'. This will ensure future communications are sent to your inbox.

If you have any difficulties joining, please contact will@friendlywater.org.

>> Register for the Board Meeting

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Subject: Friendly Water for the World June 2021 newsletter