- income generation

-job creation

-vocational training

- environmental health

-environmental remediation

-pollution reduction

-urban greening

- safe water provision

-sanitation

-waste-management and treatment

Level of Activity: Metropolitan

Ecosystem: Tropical/Sub-Tropical

BACKGROUND

The growing population in informal settlements coupled with the lack of or inadequate services is a major problem in urban centres. One of the most essential and lacking services in these areas is the provision of clean hygienic water and this forms the mission of our project, hereby called the Water for Work Project (WWP).

The WWP aims at easing the water problem in informal settlements. It is worth pointing out here that about 55% of the population of Nairobi lives in these informal settlements. We have been distributing water trolleys for carrying water in these areas of need. In some of these areas water collection points or kiosks exist but are far from most households. In other areas they are simply unavailable. Also in some areas they are existing but the taps are practically dry. The implementing agencies intend to solve these problems in the following ways:

-To the men groups water trolleys will be distributed

-To the women groups, water trolleys will be distributed and water kiosks built as deemed appropriate.

Considering that women and children are the most vulnerable groups in these area, they will be allowed to sell this water and some of the bill will be settled in the initial stages of the project. However the project is self sustaining in that the CBOs will generate income to pay this water bill over time.

It has come to our notice that some of the projects in these areas do not fully serve the intended population. In some areas there does not exist well organised groups which naturally are the recipients of such benefits. What normally happens is that the powerful individuals in these groups individualise such equipment for their personal or family use hence the target community benefits only on paper.

Also it appears the implementing agencies are getting more and more money minded such that the whole venture ends up exploiting the vulnerable people it was supposed to benefit. Individuals in these NGO's not only get the credit but also the fruits of such projects. We have put in place the necessary controls to ensure that such conflict of interests does not arise in the first place.

Several NGO's are already working on similar or related projects to ours and therefore our project concentrates on those areas that have been identified as really needy and deserving. Though we had identified 25 interested groups we have selected only 6 of them for our pilot scheme.

The start date for the initiative was August 12th, 1997.

At the moment the CBOs in the informal settlements are already involved in the project. Clean ups are being organised every 3 weeks and families are generating some income from the sale of the water.

One of the expected outputs of this project was a clean environment. This aim has been achieved with the regular clean up exercises and families have been taught the essence of boiling drinking water before use.

The main resource in any community or nation is its people. Very often people wait for 'outsiders' to do thing for them while they can solve most of their problems at the community level, with very little support from outsiders. Communities must learn to solve their problems and this one fact we have been stressing to all the groups we are dealing with. They should never feel inferior because they live in the informal settlements.