Start Date: 2009-12-01

Completion Date: 2010-12-01

Technology Used:

For the purposes of this grant we intend to attain short term objectives by improving the standard of living of the informal settlement by providing access to adequate clean water. Although we are open to doing this through utilizing the Raincatcher techniques, our project areas face special problems unlike our rural counterparts and this might not work.
This is because informal settlements are basically located on land they do not own. Being squatters they are liable to be relocated at a moments notice. Therefore provision of ferro concrete tanks was ruled out and in its place, plastic tanks were appropriate because of mobility in case of rapid relocation. We also noted that water collected from the roofs is still dirty because wind borne dust from the ground is blown to the rooftops and subsequently to the tanks thus necessitating water purification again, however the water collected could be used for washing leaving the piped water to be used for drinking and cooking.
There are possibilities of reviving several water points that were formerly installed by the government but forsaken when vandalism was encountered. The water points were vandalized because the community had no feelings of ownership. However this is a long term objective because government projects take time and a lot of bureaucracy is involved.
The viable and time tested immediate option is to provide water kiosks/stands in various locations to be run by our members. We will use the grant to pay for water connection charges, meter, plastic pipes, water stand and plastic water tanks etc. The members will dig the trenches as well as connect the pipes thus saving labour costs as well as making community participation a reality thus forging ownership of the project.
Bodaboda Initiatives requires US $ 45,820 to connect 10 water points for each of the 7 settlements (making a total of 70 water connections) chosen by members. Our members will contribute US $11,455.00 (25% of total cost) through cash and kind. Thus we are requesting US$34365. This budget includes community mobilization where we will hold consultative meetings in each of the seven sites involving 10 community leaders per community. We will also capacity building sensitization workshops for 30 community leaders lasting 3 days.

Phases:

Our intention is to divide the project into two phases.Phase 1 lasting 6 months will deal with mobilization of the community as well as the actual water installations.Phase 2 lasting another 6 months will be capacity building and water and hygiene sensiti

Community Organization:

• We will hold a capacity building workshop lasting 3 days with 30 representatives from the 7 informal settlement. During the training sessions we will address the promotion of health through hygiene education, water and sanitation facilities, environmental, and waste management issues. We will also involve community leaders, government officers and conduct household surveys.
• We will initiate and train water committees and groups on leadership, communication and organisation skills, operation and maintenance of facilities, Records keeping, Management, Income generating activities, Health and sanitation, Sustainability issues i.e. gender issues, Environmental protection etc
• Physical implementation (Liaising with women groups in construction of 70 water kiosks, construction of toilets and other sanitation facilities)
• Documentation. The water committees will ensure that all funds collected from water kiosks are well documented on a daily basis and good book keeping practiced. The money collected will enable payment of bills to the Municipal Council as well as being used for IGAs.
• Networking with other organizations with same interests
• Monitoring, follow ups and evaluation

Government Interaction:

There are several water points which were initiated by the government but were abandoned later due to a cash crunch or bad government objectives.Bodaboda is willing to enter negotiations with the government to revive these water points which have some infrastructure in place already.
If we are given the go ahead by the government to reviving the several water points that were formerly installed but forsaken when vandalism was encountered we would hold a community meeting where all the stakeholders would be invited and pass over the ownership of the water points to the community who would not vandalize their own property.

Ancillary activities:

• To improve water quality through using Simple Solar Water Pasteurizers and boiling unclean water collected from pools using Solar Cookers.
• To strengthen community management and institutional capacity in order to run and manage installed facilities by holding 3 capacity building workshops lasting 2 days for every informal settlement. During the training sessions we will address the promotion of health through hygiene education, water and sanitation facilities, environmental, and waste management issues. We will also facilitate gender equity in project formulation, decision making and management facilities and services.
• To improve the cleanliness of the environment through organized garbage collection in the community.
• To empower the communities to save through the compulsory group savings from funds generated from the project.

Other Issues:

Bodaboda Initiatives Kenya is a community based organization (CBO) that was started in late 1999 as a self help group. We have already filed papers with our National NGO Bureau to upgrade our organisation to NGO status to be able to serve the women on a national basis.
The group was formed by women in the second largest informal settlement in located in Thika Municipality which encompasses 7 villages with a population of 85,000 people of which women form the greater number. HIV/AIDS and poverty are extreme with women living on less than US$1 a day.
Being an informal settlement the women and residents do not own the land they occupy hence they are squatters. However we do have stagnant ponds left over from excavated stone quarries where runoff water collects during the wet seasons. The women use the water from the stagnant ponds to wash their clothes as well as feed their animals. Some of the poorest women even use the water for cooking as they cannot afford to pay for water from vendors or water kiosks. The quarries are over 6 kms away.
The municipality provides water through pipes to households but as we pointed out earlier they cannot provide water to informal settlements which have no ownership documents. Those who have piped water pay approximately US$100 per month. In some regions near the main water pipes organisations are allowed by the Municipal Council to construct water kiosks on designated road reserves. Our organisation has in place a number of water kiosks which belong to our members. In other areas water is delivered in 20 litre containers to households. The quality of the water is poor as it is collected from unreliable sources. Water purchased from water kiosks is safe to drink but the majority of our women cannot access this. They collect water from the stagnant ponds and a nearby river which is heavily contaminated from sewage effluents and pesticides from flower farms upriver.
Most of the water has to be treated. A few members of the community can afford a water purifier purchased from chemists and supermarkets called Water Guard. A number of members in our organisation have been introduced in the use of Solar Cookers to boil their water but the majority of the women just use the water without any treatment which has led to several cases of waterborne diseases in the local hospital.
There are very few public or private toilets. Some have dug pit latrines less than 10 ft deep which fill very rapidly and are unsafe to use. Majority of the people use the famous ‘flying toilets’ where polythene papers are used and disposed outside the door. Raw sewage flows everywhere and ends up in the only river that women collect the water from. It also ends up in the stagnant quarry pools which are also a water source.
In the areas that we operate in we have formed water committees who oversee the distribution of water from our water kiosks. They are also responsible for organizing water purification by training women groups on hygienic practices.
We have also started addressing the problem of plastic waste management by collecting, sorting and recycling plastic waste thereby producing recycled products for reuse. The people involved are the waste collectors, street children, economically marginalized women from the slum areas and OVC’s (Orphans and Vulnerable Children) .Bodaboda Initiatives has been involved in waste collecting for some time. Initially this was solely for business purposes because we got our daily bread from the activity. From poverty alleviation we also realized that the environment was getting cleaner and thus was born the idea of adding plastic waste and the idea of recycling
Bodaboda Initiatives are heavily involved in the issue of water and environment sustainability and we face several problems in the informal settlements.
o Women want to address the disparities concerning their representation, and the decision-making process.
o Women place high values on the opportunity cost of the time spent in collecting water; and when access to water improves, more time can be devoted to income-generating activities such as agriculture and micro-enterprises. In densely populated slums waiting times at water kiosks of 1-2 hours
o A family of five would need 100 liters of water a day to meet its minimum needs; the weight of that water is 100 kg (220 pounds). In these circumstances, women and children may need to walk to the water source two or three times daily, with the first of these trips taking place before dawn.
o Carrying heavy loads over long periods of time causes cumulative damage to the spine, the neck muscles and the lower back, thus leading to the early ageing of the vertebral column.
o As in rural areas, most of the fetching and waiting in urban areas falls upon women and girl children. There is a straight trade-off between time spent in school and time spent collecting water, and this is much less true for boys than it is for girls The lack of reliable access to water and sanitation could therefore be a major contributor to continuing gender inequality in education and the opportunities that education can provide.
o Sources of surface as well as ground water are increasingly contaminated from human and animal waste, agricultural runoff, chemicals such as fluorine or arsenic, and industrial effluents.
o The most deadly health cost of waterborne diseases is the 1.8 million lives of children under five that diarrhea claims every year. In addition, the suffering caused by sickness and disability from waterborne, water-washed and water-related diseases, such as intestinal helminths, periodic episodes of cholera, blinding trachoma and schistosomiasis is amply documented in the public health and epidemiological literatures. But much less attention has been paid to the health risks that women face as water carriers.
o Globally, more than 50% of poor women suffer malnutrition and iron deficiency and30% or more of a woman’s daily energy intake is spent just in fetching water.
o The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water per day, the average North American uses more the 300 litres per day.
Our Key issues of concern
1. Water and sanitation are crucial for sustainable development
• poverty reduction- Lack of access to improved water and sanitation services is strongly correlated with poverty. E.g. Sanitation and hygiene are indicators of the poverty status in the Kenya.
• human development – education and productivity
• ecosystem management - water crucial for environmental sustainability
2. Water is a pre requisite for meeting all the other MDGs including MDG 3 on Gender Equality.
• Water is Life, Sanitation is Dignity
• The indispensable role of water is reflected in the twin aphorisms “water for life” and “water is life.”
• Everyone has a right to safe and clean water, to a dignified life
• Defined as the right to access, both physically and economically, a sufficient quantity and quality of water necessary to meet basic human needs
• Inspite of the wide recognition that gender integration is key for sustainability of water management, policies and programmes are still insensitive /unresponsive
• Women are absent in decision making
• Inappropriate technologies
• Water privatization,
• Poor water resources management
• Low appreciation for gender – low budgets
3. In concert with other organisations dealing with the marginalized women particularly from slum areas, we have come up with 'The Kenya Women Manifesto', with demands to encourage women's advancement and participation in leadership. It calls for affirmative action to be implemented, to increase the number of women at all levels of government. Currently in Kenya, out of the 222 members of parliament, only 18 are women. There are 30 cabinet ministers, only two of these are women. None of the eight heads of provinces are women. An Affirmative Action Bill is still pending, despite having been given the nod by parliament in 2000. At a meeting in Nairobi, leaders of women's groups and political parties said the manifesto would be used to convince citizens particularly women to vote for female candidates. With vernacular stations, it is about hearing the message, and so we will be able to reach more people more effectively. We use the more than ten radio stations that broadcast in local languages and these are a powerful tool for informing the country, which has a relatively high rate of illiteracy. Of the country’s 30 million people, eight million are illiterate 60% women. As efforts to have women voted for intensify, the issue of culture has been cited as a major challenge. Customs and traditions are discriminating against women, portraying them as inferior and creating the impression that only men can be leaders. We and other aspirant women politicians are trying to surmount this obstacle -- by enlisting the help of men. If men are involved in the campaign to let society know that women too can be leaders, negative attitudes towards women will be reduced.
4. The seven MDG goals relate to poverty and hunger, universal primary education, gender equality and empowerment of women, child mortality, maternal health, HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases and environmental sustainability. The UN defines environmental sustainability as "using natural resources wisely and protecting the ecosystems on which our survival depends.
Women in poor countries are often better at managing water resources and should play a bigger role in policy-making. Women are responsible for fetching the water. In practice community water and sanitation projects designed and run by women are more sustainable and effective than those that are not. Women have knowledge about water resources, including location, quality and storage. Women's organisations must pressure their governments to change water management structures, men must be sensitized to gender issues and governments held accountable for progress. Corruption in water management is another hot issue. Corruption is a huge problem and there has been very little work done on it. Women in poor countries are often better at managing water resources and should play a bigger role.
The crisis in water is the violation of the basic human right to water. Access to water is intrinsic to human development. The deficits in water and sanitation are trapping households in cycles of poverty. Few countries treat water as a political priority. The limited coverage of water utilities in slums means that the poorest tend to pay the most for water. The poor, women and children have least voice in asserting their claims to water. Many countries have made progress by legislating on the right to water, and communities have shown leadership in improving sanitary conditions.
Bodaboda Initiatives have 40 women leaders each with a cell of 20 other members under their charge thus the there will be 800 women on the frontline. Each family has an average of 5 dependents thus making a total of 4000 people. The water will be sold on a subsidized price to our members but other residents who are not part of our network will be charged a bit higher (We will liaise with the water committees on charges).We project that approximately 12,000 people will be directly involved in the water provision.4,000 water vendors will be selling clean water from our water points for sale to residents. Ultimately we intend to serve the 85,000 people living in the 7 informal settlements.
The following individuals are the key people involved in Bodaboda Initiatives activities and will directly participate in the project.
• Beatrice Wamuhu-Project Coordinator
• Lydiah Wambui- Organizing Secretary
• Johnson Warui- Logistics Manager
• Other Human Resource persons will be hired on demand
Being the main officials involved in the day to day running of Bodaboda Initiatives their duties include the following among others:
• Community Mobilisation (meeting women groups, meeting community leaders, holding seminars and workshops, household surveys)
• Training water committees and groups (leadership, communication and organisation skills, Operation and maintenance of facilities, Records keeping, Management, Income generating activities, Health and sanitation, Sustainability issues i.e. gender issues, Environmental protection)
• Physical implementation (Liaising with women groups in construction of water kiosks, construction of toilets and other sanitation facilities)
• Monitoring, follow ups and evaluation
• Documentation - The data is from:
Written documents - both internal and external. The local community has unwritten but useful information.
• Networking with other organizations with same interests
The project cannot succeed without active community participation. We will closely monitor the water project to check
• the monthly bills are paid on time to avoid disconnection,
• any pipe leakages are repaired
• no pipes or water tanks have been vandalized
• proper sales records of water are kept
• that water and sanitation hygiene is being practiced
• whether new members are willing to join us.
After the donor has withdrawn, we expect to expand over time by utilizing the funds we collect from water sales to continue increasing water points and ensure that water and sanitation hygiene is being practiced.
This being a community run organisation with the members seeing the fruits of their work monitoring and evaluation are ingrained in the project. We will evaluate our success by noting the following:
• No. of persons who have improved their standards of living in the informal settlement by accessing adequate clean water.
• No. of the water storage tanks installed.
• No. of water points installed from the municipal water mains for our member groups.
• No. of women who have improve water quality through using Simple Solar Water Pasteurizers and boiling unclean water collected from pools using Solar Cookers.
• No. of persons who have attained strengthened community management and institutional capability in order to run and manage installed facilities.
• No. of workshops conducted to promote health through hygiene education, water and sanitation facilities, environmental, and waste management issues.
• Increase of facilitation of gender equity in project formulation, decision making and management facilities and services.
• Improvement in the cleanliness of the environment through organized garbage collection in the community.
• No. of members of the communities empowered through group savings from funds generated from the project.