Friendly Water for the World May 2021 newsletter

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Subject: Friendly Water for the World May 2021 newsletter

Welcome to the May issue of our monthly newsletter.

So, how are you doing? It's a question we don't often have an opportunity to ask. But at a time when so many of our community are at heightened risk of Covid -19, especially as new waves sweep through places like India and Kenya, we want to know. The pandemic clearly isn't behind us yet. Even when it is, there is much healing to be done, and a new kind of world to make. And it's something we are going to be doing together. Every month during our final-Friday Chat, we get to ask everyone who joins us how they are (please join us for a Chat!) - we really value that opportunity to catch up with everyone. So, we want to know how you are. Please let us know - just respond to this email. We'd love to share how you are doing with others in the next newsletter.

In our newsletter this month you can read about:

Our Mission Expands
Matsakha Build
Kambiri Build
Potential Builds (near Monze)
Chat About Building Better
May 18th 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 Mission Expands

As mentioned in our 5 Valuable Lessons news article, during 2019 and the early part of 2020 staff members and the Board gathered together on many occasions to talk frankly about the last 10 years. They were the kinds of thoughts and conversations you often have when approaching a noteworthy anniversary or milestone. We wanted to identify what in our program had worked and what needed work. Those discussions led to deeper analysis, an important community survey and meeting, additional field evaluations, and a great deal of testing. The insights that work revealed prompted us to transform much of the way we approach our work, from process to program and people. That transformation starts at the top, with a newly expanded mission statement:

Friendly Water for the World trains and equips communities in sustainable village-scale technologies to safeguard, conserve, and expand essential resources.

Friendly Water for the World has always focused on water. It's right there in our name. But over the years we discovered that the people with whom we are trying to build a better future were usually lacking more than clean water. They often had limited access to any water at all, clean or not. In fact, people were frequently lacking many or all of the essential resources necessary to lead a healthy life and plan for the future.

Our expanded mission takes into account the whole person, the whole community, and how we together create sustainable change. We don't claim to have the resources, technology, or ability to meet every challenge a community may have. But to be successful, whatever program we create must consider how all these challenges work together.

We'll have a deeper discussion of our new mission statement and other branding standards and guidelines in future newsletters.

As you read through this newsletter, you'll notice we are also using some new terms, specifically build and program. Next month we will share a more detailed article about these new terms, our new mission, and other branding standards and guidelines. But for now, think of a Build as a mixture and activation of people, place, and program; and a Build Center (formerly Water Technology Center) as a geographic hub for Builds. Program replaces the word project and is an expanded set of integrated initiatives built around our 5-step Community Investment process. It should all make sense once you read through the examples below, but feel free to contact us if you'd like to know more. Or you can just wait to read about it more in our next newsletter.

Matsakha Build

Good Hygiene program

First, a quick refresher - Good Hygiene is the first program selected by the community and partners in the Matsakha Build. During our 3-day Community Engagement event in October 2020, residents of Matsakha shared their concerns about Covid-19 and the lack of quality soap for handwashing at home and perhaps most importantly, at the local schools. In fact, schools were about to re-open with limited supplies of soap on hand. Between October and January, we partnered with Matsakha Development Group (MDG - the team that represents Matsakha and was created at our Community Engagement) and Transforming Communities for Social Change (our local NGO partner) to co-create a program Sustainability Plan and schedule technology training. In early January, TCSC representative Ezra Kigondu trained MDG Marketing and Production teams to make soap. MDG has been selling 'Meta' soap and cleaning up ever since.

We just received the progress they've made through April. MDG sells soap in a variety of ways. The soap is available in different sized containers ranging from 500 milliliters to 5 liters or can be used to refill containers (the 100ml listed below was a limited-run free sample size). People can buy the soap or take some on credit. It is also subsidized or offered for free to individuals unable to afford it. For the first four months of the year, MDG shared the following progress:

That's almost 2,000 Liters of soap produced by the people of Matsakha for the people of Matsakha! Although, we've heard that people from outside Matsakha have been seeking out and purchasing the soap, too. Their great progress was only slowed in April due to the third wave of Covid-19 that has locked down most of Kenya. This time, they have the soap to help protect themselves, their families, and their schools.

Building Better program

MDG speaking for the community of Matsakha, selected Building Better as their second program. The dry season is coming in Kakamega County and it's a perfect time to press bricks and get them cured. Many of these new bricks will be used for the construction of rainwater catchment tanks (part of Water Security, their next program) at local schools.

As of this writing, the team has pressed over 4,200 bricks at a pace of about 650 per day. They are using two Interlocking Stabilized Soil Brick (ISSB) presses. But not the two they started with. Originally, a curved brick press and a straight brick press were delivered to Matsakha. Then the program partners determined that we could and would use curved bricks to build rainwater catchment tanks at Matsakha schools. If MDG had two curved presses, they could produce the bricks for those tanks in half the time.

This is where we get to see one of the benefits of running these programs through a Build Center. There are currently three builds running out of our Kakamega Build Center - Matsakha, Kambiri, and Bukabero. It turns out that two ISSB presses were also being used in Kambiri. And one of them was a curved brick press. All it took was for Eric (our Arica Programs Manager) to load that press into Noah (our trusty van) and swap it with the one in Matsakha, just up the road by Kenyan standards. That inter-Build program coordination is by design and will become a fundamental feature of the work we now do.

MDG members were trained on how to use both presses, and are now pressing bricks directly on the grounds of the schools where the 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.

Kambiri Build

Building Better program

In September 2020, we purchased a (straight brick) ISSB press for Eric and our Kakamega Build Center. Bricks are in demand everywhere. And lots of people are interested in this new method of making them. By purchasing our own press, Eric and his team could test different materials and methods, like which kind of murram (a type of soil) to use, and how the environment affects curing. We set about making bricks and before too long Eric sold an order of 400, and followed that a couple of months later with an order of 1,000 bricks.

In December, a (curved brick) ISSB press arrived for the Build Center. It was delivered with training by Makiga, the engineering solutions manufacturer who makes these particular presses. The plan at the time was to test using the curved bricks as rainwater catchment tank walls. That test was successful. Eric now has a 20,000 liter tank collecting water from his roof. And we are preparing to build four more tanks at schools in Kambiri. That will require another 4,000 curved bricks. Eric and his team is also pressing more straight bricks to cover orders for 7,000 bricks and more.

Along the way, we have learned a lot about murram types, soil mixtures, brick curing, and how to build better with this essential resource. These kinds of bricks have the potential to be the technology foundation for several of our programs, from Water Security to Safe Cooking and Household Sanitation.

Potential Builds

As you can tell from the picture above, Monze Coach Lenah and her group had a recent adventure surveying three communities under the Mwanza chiefdom in the Monze district. Our driver Colin, laying on the ground in the grey, had them on their way soon enough, to our relief. In the middle of distant-from-everywhere is the last place you want to be stuck. The three principal members of our team, Coach Lenah, driver Colin, and Zambia Women and Girls Foundation member Spiwe, were on their way to:

Hamadunga - pop. 240

Hamooya - pop. 401

Munamoomba - pop. 863

The communities were selected and recommended to us by the Department of Health because they are exposed to unsafe water. Mr Habwacha from the Munamoomba Ministry of Health also accompanied the team on the survey. A preliminary view of the questionnaire responses indicates that each community's challenges are unique, but members in all of the communities have limited access to essential resources, travel multiple kilometers for water, use frequently compromised water points, and suffer from waterborne disease.

The next step for us is to evaluate the surveys and communities further and then determine whether to move forward with a Community Engagement.

Chat About Building Better

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? Join our Chat to find out and share your own ideas.

>> Register for the Chat

What is the one thing we can do to assist communities in combating not just water scarcity, but also deforestation and infectious disease? We must make the outcomes of our work sustainable. Every technology and training and optimizing action must be designed for sustainability. But what do sustainable Rainwater Catchment Tanks look like? How do you engage communities in sustainable long-term partnerships? Why do so many technologies and solutions on a continent like Africa, which receives billions in aid each year, become unsustainable and fail? Watch this Chat to learn why development programs don't last, and what we are doing to fix it.

>> Watch the Chat about sustainable development

May Board Meeting

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

On Tuesday, May 18th 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 May 2021 newsletter