Project Status



Project Type:  Protected Spring

Regional Program: Western Kenya WaSH Program

Impact: 445 Served

Project Phase:  In Service - Mar 2018

Functionality Status:  Water Flowing - Needs Attention

Last Checkup: 02/02/2024

Project Features


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Community Profile

This project is a part of our shared program with Western Water and Sanitation Forum (WEWASAFO). Our team is pleased to directly share the below report (edited for clarity, as needed).

Welcome to the Community

A normal day in Kakubudu Community starts at 5 am. This is when most men here get up and onto their motorbikes to search for customers. They earn money by taxiing others to and fro. The women wake up at 6 am to prepare the children for school, then they start their daily household chores. After these, most women go out looking for casual work such as washing clothes and doing other people's farm work. They return at 12 pm to prepare lunch for the entire family, because even the children are sent home from school for an hour. The women must then go out again to fetch water and firewood to prepare supper.

We learned about Kakubudu Community and its clean water scarcity through the students and  teachers at Kakubudu Primary School, where we're helping students get clean water (click here to see). A project at this school will only have its full impact on students if they have clean water at home, too - so they directed us here to see Fred Lagueni Spring.

Water Situation

One of the main water sources in Kakubudu is Fred Lagueni Spring. It is in a bushy area that attracts a lot of insects, many of which can be seen in the water. The more people who use the spring, the dirtier the water becomes - the bottom is stirred up as people repeatedly dip their containers. The spring is especially dirty during the rainy season when rainwater washes feces, farming chemicals, and dirt into the water.

Community members are using Fred Lagueni's water for all of their needs, including drinking. After drinking, there is constant typhoid and parasitic complications. Mr. Fred Makaka commented, "The health situation in this community is so poor with most people suffering from diseases such as typhoid and amoeba. The situation cannot be easily salvaged because most of this people are poor; seeking medical attention becomes expensive. Being a polygamous village, women suffer more because they are left to cater for their [huge] families on their own most of the time."

Sanitation Situation

Less than half of the households in Kakubudu have a pit latrine. While some people share sanitation facilities with their neighbors, others reportedly opt for open defecation; this was exposing the entire community to fecal-oral diseases. If latrines are old, dirty, or poorly built, using the bushes as a bathroom often seems the safer option. Most of the latrines are traditionally built using thatched sticks filled in with mud.

Only a few families have and use hand-washing stations, dish racks, and clotheslines. These are all easy to construct with local materials, so we plan to teach why and how to do so when training in Kakubudu.

Plans: Hygiene and Sanitation Training

Community members will attend hygiene and sanitation training for at least two days. This training will ensure participants are no longer ignorant about healthy practices and their importance. The facilitator plans to use PHAST (Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation), CLTS (Community-Led Total Sanitation), ABCD (Asset-Based Community Development), group discussions, handouts, and demonstrations at the spring. One of the most important topics we plan to cover is open defecation and its dangers, as well as having and using a pit latrine.

Training will also result in the formation of a committee that will oversee operations and maintenance at the spring. They will enforce proper behavior around the spring and delegate tasks that will help preserve the site, such as building a fence and digging proper drainage. The fence will keep out destructive animals, and the drainage will keep the area’s mosquito population at a minimum.

Plans: Sanitation Platforms

On the final day of training, participants will select five families that should benefit from new latrine floors.

Training will also inform the community and selected families on what they need to contribute to make this project a success. They must mobilize locally available materials, such as bricks, clean sand, hardcore, and ballast. The five families chosen for sanitation platforms must prepare by sinking a pit for the sanitation platforms to be placed over. All community members must work together to make sure that accommodations and food are always provided for the work teams.

Plans: Spring Protection

Fetching water is predominantly a female role, done by both women and young girls. Protecting the spring and offering training and support will therefore help empower the female members of the community by giving them more time and efforts to engage and invest in income-generating activities.

In addition, protecting the spring will ensure that the water is safe, adequate and secure. Construction will keep surface runoff and other contaminants out of the water.

Project Updates


May, 2020: COVID-19 Prevention Training Update at Kakubudu Community, Fred Lagueni Spring

Our teams are working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Join us in our fight against the virus while maintaining access to clean, reliable water.

We are carrying out awareness and prevention trainings on the virus in every community we serve. Very often, our teams are the first (and only) to bring news and information of the virus to rural communities like Kakubudu, Kenya.

We trained more than 13 people on the symptoms, transmission routes, and prevention of COVID-19. Before there were any reported cases in the area, we worked with trusted community leaders and the Water User Committee to gather community members for the training.

We covered essential hygiene lessons:

- Demonstrations on how to build a simple handwashing station

- Proper handwashing technique

- The importance of using soap and clean water for handwashing

- Cleaning and disinfecting commonly touched surfaces including at the water point.

We covered COVID-19-specific guidance in line with national and international standards:

- Information on the symptoms and transmission routes of COVID-19

- What social distancing is and how to practice it

- How to cough into an elbow

- Alternative ways to greet people without handshakes, fist bumps, etc.

- How to make and properly wear a facemask.

During training, we installed a new handwashing station with soap near the community’s water point, along with a sign with reminders of what we covered.

Due to the rampant spread of misinformation about COVID-19, we also dedicated time to a question and answer session to help debunk rumors about the disease and provide extra information where needed.

We continue to stay in touch with this community as the pandemic progresses. We want to ensure their water point remains functional and their community stays informed about the virus.

Water access, sanitation, and hygiene are at the crux of disease prevention. You can directly support our work on the frontlines of COVID-19 prevention in all of the communities we serve while maintaining their access to safe, clean, and reliable water.




December, 2018: A Year Later: Kakubudu Community

A year ago, your generous donation enabled us to protect Fred Lagueni for Kakubudu Community in Kenya. The contributions of incredible monthly donors and others giving directly to The Water Promise allow our local teams to visit project sites throughout the year, strengthening relationships with communities and evaluating the water project over time. These consistent visits allow us to learn vital lessons and hear amazing stories. Read more...




March, 2018: Kakubudu Community Project Complete

Fred Laugeni Spring in Kakubudu Community, Kenya is now a protected, clean source of water thanks to your donation. The spring is protected from contamination, five sanitation platforms have been provided for the community, and training has been given in sanitation and hygiene. Imagine the changes that all of these resources are going to bring for these residents! You made it happen!  Now, want to do a bit more? Join our team of monthly donors and help us maintain this spring protection and many other projects.

(Editor's Note: A technical difficulty in the field only allowed us to get small pictures of training, some construction, and sanitation platforms. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.)

Project Result: New Knowledge

Since the community had already formed a water and sanitation committee for Kakubudu, we worked closely with the committee to arrange hygiene and sanitation training. They urged at least one member of every household to attend sessions at the spring site.

Thanks to the baseline survey, we were able to address serious issues like open defecation. We led the participants in CLTS to motivate them to take action. They then worked together to create an action plan that will benefit everyone.

Some of the other topics we covered included:

- Hand-washing

- Handling water and food hygienically

- Safe waste disposal

- Water treatment

- Management and maintenance of the water point

One of the first concrete actions the ladies took after training was to look for better water containers. Many had been using open buckets, but the majority immediately adopted covered jerrycans.

Mrs. Agripina Arigula said, "I am so happy that I attended this training on water, sanitation and hygiene. For me, I never knew that a child's waste is equally harmful as our's. But now I know, and I want to totally make sure that I throw it away in the latrine and not behind the kitchen with the other trash."

Project Result: Sanitation Platforms

All five sanitation platforms have been installed. These five families are happy about this milestone of having a private latrine all their own, and are optimistic that there will be much less open defecation. We are continuing to encourage families to finish building walls and roofs over their new latrine floors.

Project Result: Spring Protection

Community members provided all locally available construction materials, e.g bricks, wheelbarrows of clean sand, wheelbarrows of ballast, fencing poles and hard core (crushed rock and gravel). Accommodation and tea, uji (porridge) and dinner were provided for the artisan, and we asked a few people to volunteer their time and strength to help the artisan with manual labor.

The spring area was excavated to create space for setting the foundation of polyethylene, wire mesh and concrete. After the base had been set, both wing walls and the headwall were set in place using brickwork. The discharge pipe was fixed low in place through the head wall to direct the water from the reservoir to the drawing area.

As the wing walls and head wall were curing, the stairs were set and the tiles were fixed directly below the discharge pipe. This reduces the erosive force of the falling water and beautifies the spring. The process of plastering the head wall and wing walls on both sides reinforces the brickwork and prevents water from the reservoir from seeping through the walls and allows pressure to build in the collection box to push water up through the discharge pipe.

Lastly, the base of the spring was plastered and the collection box was cleaned. The source area was filled up with clean hardcore and covered with a polyethylene membrane to eliminate any potential sources of contamination.

This process transformed Fred Laugeni Spring into a source of flowing, clean water. There was so much excitement as water started coming from the pipe. Mrs. Agripina said, "I had gone to various leaders, ranging from members of the county assembly to members of parliament, not forgetting the deputy governor. I asked them all to assist us in getting clean, safe water. All their empty promises never yielded anything. But you, you are angels sent from heaven!"




November, 2017: Kakubudu Community Project Underway

Kakubudu Community will soon have a clean, safe source of water thanks to your donation. Community members have been drinking contaminated water from Fred Lagueni Spring, and often suffer physical illnesses after doing so. Our partner conducted a survey of the area and deemed it necessary to protect the spring, build new sanitation platforms (safe, easy-to-clean concrete floors for latrines), and conduct sanitation and hygiene training. Thanks to your generosity, waterborne disease will no longer be a challenge for the families drinking the spring’s water. We look forward to sharing more details with you as they come! But for now, please take some time to check out the report containing community information, pictures, and maps.




Project Photos


Project Type

Springs are water sources that come from deep underground, where the water is filtered through natural layers until it is clean enough to drink. Once the water pushes through the surface of the Earth, however, outside elements like waste and runoff can contaminate the water quickly. We protect spring sources from contamination with a simple waterproof cement structure surrounding layers of clay, stone, and soil. This construction channels the spring’s water through a discharge pipe, making water collection easier, faster, and cleaner. Each spring protection also includes a chlorine dispenser at the waterpoint so community members can be assured that the water they are drinking is entirely safe. Learn more here!


A Year Later: Kakubudu Community

December, 2018

“Thank you and may God bless you for giving back to communities here in Kenya.” – Ashely Lukatsiva

Keeping The Water Promise

There's an incredible community of monthly donors who have come alongside you in supporting clean water in Kakubudu Community, Fred Lagueni Spring.

This giving community supports ongoing sustainability programs that help Kakubudu Community, Fred Lagueni Spring maintain access to safe, reliable water. Together, they keep The Water Promise.

We’re confident you'll love joining this world-changing group committed to sustainability!

A year ago, your generous donation enabled us to protect Fred Lagueni for Kakubudu Community in Kenya. The contributions of incredible monthly donors and others giving directly to The Water Promise allow our local teams to visit project sites throughout the year, strengthening relationships with communities and evaluating the water project over time. These consistent visits allow us to learn vital lessons and hear amazing stories – and we’re excited to share this one from local team member Olivia Bomji with you.


Access to safe water, together with good hygiene practices, have reduced the transmission of waterborne diseases in Kakubudu Community. There are now tippy tap handwashing stations hung near the latrines at the majority of households, showing that the people here took to heart what they learned at the training a year ago.

"We are very happy and thankful to you for implementing the project in our community, since we now know that sanitation and hygiene is the key to a healthy life," said Agripinna Livivi.

"It has really changed our life for the better."

Agripinna Livivi

Protection of the spring is only one step along the journey toward sustainable access to clean water. The Water Project is committed to consistent monitoring of each water source. Our monitoring and evaluation program, made possible by donors like you, allows us to maintain our relationships with communities by visiting up to 4 times each year to ensure that the water points are safe and reliable.

This is just one of the many ways that we monitor projects and communicate with you. Additionally, you can always check the functionality status and our project map to see how all of our water points are performing, based on our consistent monitoring data.

One project is just a drop in the bucket towards ending the global water crisis, but the ripple effects of this project are truly astounding. This project in Kakubudu, Kenya is changing many lives.

"I thank you for doing this project in our community because we children used to get sick from drinking the spring water. But, ever since the spring was constructed, we no longer get sick," said Ashely Lukatsiva to us.

Ashely Lukatsiva

"I am happy that we have now safe and clean water for drinking. Thank you and may God bless you for giving back to communities here in Kenya."

This is only possible because of the web of support and trust built between The Water Project, our local teams, the community, and you. We are excited to stay in touch with this community and support their journey with safe water.

Read more about The Water Promise and how you can help.


Navigating through intense dry spells, performing preventative maintenance, conducting quality repairs when needed and continuing to assist community leaders to manage water points are all normal parts of keeping projects sustainable. The Water Promise community supports ongoing sustainability programs that help Kakubudu Community, Fred Lagueni Spring maintain access to safe, reliable water.

We’d love for you to join this world-changing group committed to sustainability.

The most impactful way to continue your support of Kakubudu Community, Fred Lagueni Spring – and hundreds of other places just like this – is by joining our community of monthly givers.

Your monthly giving will help provide clean water, every month... keeping The Water Promise.


Contributors

1 individual donor(s)