A visit with the Kee Self Help Group

The Kee Sand Dam

Our Water Programs Director, Crissie Ferrara, is in Kenya this week visiting a number of our partners and implementing teams.  For the past few days, she’s been spending time with Africa Sand Dam Foundation (ASDF), visiting some of our recently completed water projects to see the kinds of progress these innovative solutions make possible.

We know the potential that access to clean water can provide.  But it’s always amazing and inspiring to see it first hand.  Here’s what Crissie shared with us…

The Kee Self Help Group Sand Dam was completed last year and the community is now harvesting their first crop!

The Kee Self Help Group

This group has been dynamic since its formation and they are working together in the most wonderful ways to ensure that they utilize their new sand dam to its full potential.

These pictures below clearly show how abundant life can become with a sand dam.

Using what they have learned, through training that happens in conjunction with sand dam construction, the Kee Group has implemented a number of new farming techniques.  They have also leveraged their own landscape to multiply the benefits.

Water from the sand dam is directed to crops during irrigation.

Since the Kee Sand Dam is located a bit higher than where the group has started their garden plots, it allows for the gravitational pull of water to make irrigation far less labor intensive.

The group has taken this irrigation plan one step further too. With additional assistance and training from ASDF, they have learned how to terrace the land properly and created a spiral irrigation system which allows the water to flow freely from the dam to the various terraces.

Terracing, gravity and water make for abundant harvests.

In addition, they are now composting cow and goat manure from their livestock to add nutrients to the soil for their mango nursery. The group has specifically chosen to start growing mango trees since a new mango processing plant will be constructed in the area soon.

Mango Tree Nursery

With ready access to water, the Kee Self Help Group can now start planning for a better future and take advantage of economic opportunities that they would not have been able to even imagine before.

As they do, they’ll be busy harvesting french beans for their families and the surplus of which they can sell in the market for much needed income.

French beans mean food on the table and for the market!

We’re so pleased to be able to spend time with the communities where your support is making a huge impact.

We hope you too are inspired by the incredibly hard work these self help groups pour into the construction and use of these new sand dams. It transforms landscapes, and lives. Your support unlocks this kind of potential!

Want to get involved and be a part of one of these transforming sand dam projects?