Subject: Happy 4th of July! 🎆- Friendly Water's - Mid-May thru June 2023 Newsletter 🌍

Our mid-May thru June Newsletter

 
 

A busy spring, a busy summer.


It was a very busy spring at Friendly Water. As soon as we were done bringing together all three of our Community Based Organizations for a large inter-group training and get-together (that was discussed in our last newsletter), we proceeded to host an Annual Community Engagement (ACE) with the Matsakha community. The ACE is one of our most important features. We invite the whole community, not just the group we’re working with, and we ask to be evaluated. We use appreciative inquiry as a facilitating paradigm, because we’re not looking for glowing reviews; rather, we’re looking for insight. And we got it. We’ll be sharing more of what we learned in later newsletters. But that was only the beginning.

 

We then spent the last half of May preparing for the first half of June when, for the first time since the pandemic started in spring 2020, our staff plus two board directors would gather in Kakamega, Kenya for 7 days of internal conversations and partnership meetings.


This was our itinerary:


Sunday, June 4th- the first in-person all staff meeting we’ve ever had.


Monday, June 5th- spend the day with the first CBO we helped create the Matsakha Development Group (MDG).


Tuesday, June 6th- visit with the Kambiri Community Development Group (KCDG), our second CBO.


Wednesday, June 7th- Observe our Annual Community Engagement (ACE) process with KCDG.


Thursday, June 8th- Host and participate in a Table-Banking training with the Kenya Women Enterprise Fund with thirty participants representing all three of our CBOs.


Friday, June 9th- Meet with friends and potential partners including Aqua Clara Kenya, WestLight Solar, United Kenya Rising, and the Women Enterprise Fund.


Saturday, June 10th- Meet with and officially open our new CBO the Kevukima Group of Vihiga County, Vigulu sublocation.

 

When the week was done, we had spent significantly more time listening than talking, and in next month’s newsletter we’ll be discussing some of those highlights in greater detail.

 

During the visits, our entire team received a lot of thoughtful hospitality and everyday kindness from our partners, for which we are sincerely grateful. If you haven’t already, check out our Facebook page posts from June as we detail what we did each day during our time together.


Kambiri Community Development Group and the Friendly Water team after a day of meetings

Some images from the week.

 

The Co-Benefit

This month we’d like to shine a light on a basic tenet of our work: the co-benefit. A co-benefit describes any of the positive outputs, outcomes, or impacts initiated from a single action. This is also called the “win-win”. Everything we do is focused on producing co-benefits. Each of the seven program technologies that we teach, train, and facilitate are designed to create as many “wins” as possible. To illustrate this in action let’s look at our Good Hygiene program and our primary product, Multipurpose Liquid Soap.

A sudsy tale.

 

It began with Covid-19. When the pandemic hit, nations were locked-down, Kenya was no exception. Struggling to have an impact with a limited presence, Friendly Water scheduled a Community Engagement with the Matsakha community as soon as the government would allow gatherings. This was in early October of 2020, eight months after the disease was identified. Our original schedule was to introduce water filtration to the Matsakha community, but the community is always in charge, and we were informed that-

 

Soap is not available in schools, which is now mandatory by the Kenya Government to slow, control and stop the spread of Covid-19. Soap is also not available to many of the poor in the community. Only 6.9% of respondents used soap and clean water to wash food preparation tools.

 

Only schools with tested and accredited soap could re-open. After discussion, it was decided that we would postpone our Clean Water filtration program and put all our efforts into helping the Matsakha Development Group (MDG) produce a high-quality soap. This soap could help mitigate the transmission of Covid-19, a virus that was keeping schools closed, and whose absence was keeping a community unsure and insecure.

On April 27th, 2021, after a period of teaching, training, and governmental laboratory testing - all carried out by Friendly Water - MDG received its KEBS (Kenya Bureau of Standards) certification for the sale of what would be called “Meta” soap (in Kambiri we have "Safi" soap. The soap was rapidly distributed at cost to numerous schools in Matsakha, permitting a return to the classroom while also allowing a new Good Hygiene business to flourish.

 
 
 

The big and small of it.

 

The U.N. is working on a “plastics treaty”. The big goal is that by 2040 plastics production will be reduced worldwide by 80%. The treaty is to be signed by leaders of 175 countries. The implementation details have not been fleshed out. Friendly Water knows that we all have a part to play. We also know that 16 years is a long time to wait to achieve this goal. So, we’re starting today. All our soap containers will be eligible for refilling and reuse. As the great majority of the soap purchases are carried out by repeat customers, we believe we can reduce the use of plastic containers in the sale of our soap by 90% this year.

 

Protecting income while creating value.

 

But there’s another reason driving this decision as well. An economic reason. Inflation has hit Africa pretty hard, both through the supply chain shortages driven by the pandemic as well as Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine. And while our soap price has stayed the same, everything else costs more - and when it comes down to it, if you’re choosing between soap and food, you’re buying food.

 

This was made very clear to us when we were in the offices of MDG in Matsakha. People weren’t buying as much soap as before and if they were, they were buying cheap, imitation, non-KEBS certified soap. Now, our primary reason for teaching and training soap production is to create a health benefit through Good Hygiene while also, secondarily, creating social and economic benefits. Of course, you can’t create anything if the soap is sitting on the store shelf.

 

So, how to help? As it turns out, a new 500ml bottle of soap costs 80ksh (Kenya Shillings), or 60¢, of that, 30ksh is the cost of the container. If we reuse the containers, we can pass the savings to the customer and reduce the cost of the soap by almost 40%. All the while, profit and wages stay the same for the producer/ seller, the customers have greater financial access to a KEBS certified cleanser, and we get a head start on the 2040 plastic reduction goal.

 
 

Purchasing social change.

 

When we start a program, we look to achieve six things. That our product produces a social, health, and economic benefit. And that the program is sustainable, replicable, and scalable.

 

We know that our high-quality certified soap can produce a health benefit, because the formulation has been affirmatively tested (KEBS) for the elimination of pathogenic organisms responsible for the hand-to-hand transmission of many diseases.

 

We also know that there is a social benefit, as schools could not reopen without certified soap and that many schools were, and still are, using MDG’s Meta soap and the Kambiri Community Development Group's (KCDG) Safi soap to accomplish this task.

 

But there also needs to be an economic benefit for the soap producers and salespeople who live in the community. And there is: each liter of soap made creates 14ksh of wages. A standard 500-liter batch therefore creates 7000ksh ($50) in wages. This will be divided between 6-7 workers, so $7-$8 extra dollars in their budget. This may not seem like a lot.


But a quick story:

One morning when the team was driving from Kambiri to Matsakha a few weeks back we noticed a lot of secondary age children walking to school, or so we thought. In fact, these students, at least 150 spread out over a few miles, weren’t walking to school. They were heading home, because they didn’t have enough money to pay the school fees. Their parents had no money. How much does a month of school cost? $7-$8.

 

When we asked members of the CBOs why they chose to work in partnership with Friendly Water the answers, especially among women, were near universal- “to make sure my children are in school” or “to improve my home”.

 

Or in the words of Sarah Onzere of Matsakha who was trained in soap production and marketing:

 

“Since 2021, this is all I have been doing to have a living. I have been able to save, take care of my family and myself. Soap making is a skill to be proud of. It has changed my life in terms of financial stability, and I have been able to manage my bills. Through small savings I have been getting from marketing of Meta-liquid soap, I have been able to purchase a plot and now am comfortable that through the support system of MDG I have a small plot that I Can be Proud of.”

 

What we do.

 

Hopefully, this newsletter has provided a bit more insight into the world of Friendly Water: why we do this work, how we do this work, and how we hope to sustain and replicate our efforts into the future. All of our programs create co-benefits similar to what’s been described with our Good Hygiene program. Already, demand is increasing for all our programs and their associated products. More schools and businesses want our CBOs’ soap, more parents and teachers want our Rainwater Catchment Tanks at their schools (we’re building nine just this month), and more communities want access to our universal building material, the Interlocking Stabilized Soil Block (ISSB). We’re starting programming in July in our newest community, Vigulu. More communities, more co-benefits, more “wins” for everyone involved.

Our future looks busy, but busy is good. Thank you for being here and walking alongside us on this journey.

Your support is the only way this work gets done.

Thank you!

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Friendly Water for the World, 900 Jefferson St. SE, Unit 6070, Olympia, WA 98501, United States

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