At the end of October, I travelled to Kenya to host a local stakeholder meeting for new borehole projects located on the coast in Kilifi County.
The coastal county is largely rural and is frequented by tourists during the dry seasons for its white sandy beaches stretching 265km along the Kenyan coastline. Its main economic activities are tourism and fishing, however, I was there for a different reason which was to address the lack of safe water sources for the local residents.
I visited Kilifi County once before in April 2018 and found that nearly every community borehole had been chained up by the county government due to the borehole either being broken or producing unsafe water for consumption. The boreholes had remained locked up due to a lack of funds to fix them so the communities had to resort to unsafe water sources such as open wells to collect their water.
The months before my next visit in October were spent by local field staff identifying broken boreholes to be rehabilitated.
In late October we organised to hold a Gender Sensitive Local Stakeholder Consultation meeting which took place in a community hall in Kilifi South sub-county. Up to 50 people attended the meeting which welcomed county government officials, community members, local NGO representatives and borehole managers.
During this meeting, we collected everyone’s views and feedback on the borehole project to ensure the project is designed in a way that benefits the users of the boreholes. Overall the feedback from the meeting was very positive with stakeholders urging the start of the project.
The rehabilitation of the boreholes is to begin in December 2018 when they will start crediting. The people of Kilifi county will have a reliable safe water source close to their homesteads reducing their time collecting water and also firewood previously used to boil unsafe water. CO2balance will monitor the projects annually to measure the health benefits to the communities and gender impacts of the project. This project contributes positively to the following SDG’s:
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