MM Kenya Annual Report 2009

Annual Report 2009 Great things are happening in Kenya! We have several Africamp groups and volunteering teams there now and have received pictures from the work they are doing for Moving Mountains.

We think it’s a lesson in good aid…

The Ulamba Centre – now in it’s 7th year Early Child Development Centre – built with money donated from the Ben Clark Foundation in 2008. The structure was built by Africamp teams in 2008, and then finished off with a BCF team later in the year. It has been a total success, but the biggest achievement is that it is self-sustainable.

The building now has a ‘lived-in’ feel to it and is full of children every day and has a full time teacher

The kids come from the orphanage and Ulamba village and community. When the ECD was built we provided valuable advice on management and maintenance of the place. The ECD has a nursery school teacher qualified in primary education who is paid with money provided by all the parents who leave their children at the place every morning.

Later the Government will step in and pay her salary.

An example of Good Aid…trade not aid This is proper, planned developmental aid work in action. Here’s how it works: 1.

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Moving Mountains UK provides the capital for the structure through a substantial donor.

Moving Mountains Kenya provides advice and management for running the place The local committee appoint staff and run the place The staff get paid by the community initially and eventually by the Govt Adventure Alternative provides volunteers and Gap clients, each of whom represents a donation which goes to a development fund which is run by the committee.

The charity gets feedback from the committee on how that money is spent.

Talking of long term developmental aid…have a look at how it’s worked in a school up the road from Ulamba..

Wagai Primary School – now in it’s 7th year We have an Africamp group from Keady, Northern Ireland in the area right now and they just donated the money for a water pump in the school grounds. They dedicated it to Elizabeth Woods, a girl who was due to come to Kenya but was unable to because her Mum tragically passed away.

It’s a beautiful school in Wagai district, near to our house for Gap students, and it has 450 students who, as you can see, are all very clean and happy! But it wasn’t always that way, it used to be falling down and empty.

Africamp groups have rebuilt every classroom over many years with Moving Mountains money. Part of their expedition fee went to the project costs.

Some individuals, like Sarah Wallis from Australia, came back to build a library. Others brought everything from books to sports items. We bought them a cow and they sell the milk.

The donations from our teaching volunteers through Adventure Alternative has provided a consistent income for the school since 2002 and we have provided valuable advice in how to spend it correctly. Over the years the academic performance has increased to the point where Wagai is one of the top performing school in the district.

They have become self-sufficient, teachers love working there, parents want their children to study there and Moving Mountains is still there to help when help is needed.

An example of Good Aid – long term relationships, advice on management, self-sufficiency We have to always remember that the ultimate aim of charity is to render itself unnecessary. Our aim is for selfsufficiency. How do we do that?

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Put in the capital after doing the research and building up trust (1 year) Don’t build everything at once, do it bit by bit and build up trust (3 years) Integrate volunteers, watch how they spend the money, build up more trust (2 years) Provide more support for expansion, work together and build on the trust (future)

It’s not enough just to give money!

Donors in the West want us to spend their money wisely and we do this by becoming a part of the community that spends it.

That’s why it’s called Moving Mountains…a long hard job. A lifetime’s work…

..and talking of lives…

Wycliffe Odongo, Benson Mureithi and Edwin Kimani Wycliffe (middle) was illiterate and uneducated when we first met him. He had a vulnerability that came from going through life with no visible support or means of income. He had never travelled outside of the village. We gave him a job looking after the Gap clients.

But beneath the hard-working, honest, do-anything-for-you front there was a huge dream to go to school.

So last year we sent him to class 6 at Wagai Primary, and this term he came top in religious education, is good at maths but struggles with written Swahili. In May he climbed Mt Kenya to raise money for Moving Mountains and has travelled extensively in the country.

Benson (left) has been with us for years, going right back to 1991 when the founder Gavin worked in the slums.

Benson was a child making jikos (charcoal burners made out of scrap metal) with his blind grandfather and living rough. Grandpappy died and Benson lost his slender lifeline. We set him up with his own jiko business, put him in literacy classes at school and put him in touch with his family.

Now Benson runs one of our Moving Mountains Work Teams, he employs people to work at his jiko business and he looks after his long lost Grandmother up in Karatina. He’s a role model in the slums now and he’s 27 years old.

And this is Edwin Kimani, another lifer with Moving Mountains! He was one of the original kids supported at Muthurwa School during the Nineties. He was never going to be an Einstein so we gave him vocational skills. Now he’s travelling all over Kenya, working for the Moving Mountains Work Team, interacting with lots of people and, as you can see, very happy.

An example of good aid – children are for life, not just until they become too expensive!

How do we move mountains for people like Benson and Odongo?

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Lots of research from Moving Mountains Kenya into the lives of each child and his or her family Build up trust with the family and look at the needs of everyone in it, not just the child Agree with the family about who takes responsibility for different areas of the child’s life Don’t build reliance on money, build trust Counsel regularly, see the child as a person and not a ‘£10 a month’ cost Provide money with great care, like any parent Provide advice and training for life skills eg job interviews Act as a source of character reference when needed Don’t let the child go, work with them as they become an adult, grow with them

90% of our staff at Africampers (the Adventure Alternative company based in Kenya) and Moving Mountains Kenya are all ex-street children. It’s easy to see the reason why!

Fact: did you know that Moving Mountains is now registered in four countries? UK, Ireland, Kenya and Nepal. The NGO’s in Kenya and Nepal each have their own committee which manage all the projects.

Education, education, education!

Granaghan Outreach is one of our best and most consistent donors. They are a community-based group in Northern Ireland and every year they sponsor one of our projects and send a team out to build it. They also sponsor a teacher and a doctor, and enable us to continue with the myriad monthly fees for schooling throughout Kenya.

Here is our Africamp group from Keady laying the foundations for a dormitory at Kayeiye School, which will be especially for deaf children.

We’ve done a lot at Kayeiye already over the years, in fact so much that the school committee didn’t even ask us for money to run the place. Word is getting round about how we work!

The school will fund it’s own facilities like beds and the Government and parents will pay for the specialised teachers to manage the children. Now that’s sustainability!

But even better – look in the picture and you’ll see Kenyan children helping out. They’re on holiday, part of the Africamp summer camp, and they are enjoying helping on a community project.

An example of good aid – getting everyone involved..

With everyone working together you can achieve amazing things. So who are the stakeholders?        

The school committee – they run the place The community – they often own the land The teachers and students – they work and study there The Kenyan authorities control education and health policy in the region Moving Mountains Kenya – they work with the committee, manage the project money, give management advice to the locals and provide feedback Moving Mountains UK – they provide the original principles of management, the wider vision for the region, the safe conduit for the money and the responsibility for funding into the future.

The donors provide the money, often coming out themselves to be part of the process Adventure Alternative provides the volunteers through it’s Gap Year Programme to bring consistent income to the school into the future.

That’s a lot of people!

The most important part of all this is the principle of management. This came originally from Gavin who started the charity and it is the foundation upon which every stakeholder stands. In fact it’s the foundation upon which all the Moving Mountains charities stand.

Sometimes stakeholders misunderstand their role, our job is to rigidly enforce the principle of management! We are very strict! We don’t want to make the mistake of being well-meaning but silly with our money. We want to work with everyone to make the most of every Kenyan shilling and get everyone to share in the credit.

With our experience we can facilitate good aid and not waste money.

Wagwer Primary and Secondary School – now in it’s 4th year Just down the road there’s Wagwer School, the oldest school in the region. The buildings used to be made of mud and wattle and the children all had jiggers (parasite) in their feet from sitting in the mud.

This is the primary school section now, smart buildings with tables and chairs and books.

No kids bunking off school these days! They love coming here.

With the help of Granaghan Outreach and King Edwards School (another of our most consistent donors, primarily due to teacher Dan Wright), the school is something of a jewel in the region.

Over the years the entire primary school was renovated and a whole new secondary school was built complete with dormitories. At the moment the Africamp group from Keady is putting in foundations for a school lab, the first one in western Kenya!

An example of good aid – have a vision, not a dream Dreams are for dreamers, but a vision has a strategy and a plan! How do we do this?       

Understand the nature of the problem – it’s not good enough to just say “We need a school”, you need to look at the country policy of education in an entire region Understand the nature of the people – don’t assume western solutions work in Africa Bring your principles of management to the table first - have them agreed beforehand Train your committee very well and pay them well – not everyone can afford philanthropy!

Build up trust with your stakeholders – things take time in Africa Don’t throw money or solutions at a problem – you just look a fool Don’t run out of money halfway through - it’s not good for your reputation

Charities are equally owned by the donors, the beneficiaries and the Trustees but it is the Trustees who uphold the objectives of the charity. These objectives form part of the vision.

We were never interested in just one school, we always knew we wanted to transform education in the whole region and that’s what we’ve done with our great donors.

Ulamba Clinic – now in it’s 3rd year This clinic was funded with money from Roche Pharmaceuticals in Ennis and Electronic Concepts, Oughterard, County Galway in 2007. A team from both companies came out to build it.

This is Friday at Ulamba Clinic. Hundreds of people are waiting for treatment because this is a Free Medicine Day! Doctors from Rotary use the facility and offer free diagnoses, and free medicines funded by the Rotary Club of Sweden.

This is incredibly popular, as you can imagine. The clinic is part of the satellite network with Siaya District hospital at it’s hub.

We’ve been working with Siaya District Hospital for years, sending medical students there for their elective.

We pay the hospital for their services and they use our money for developing the place.

Over the past 8 years our money has helped enormously and we have built up a great relationship with the hospital.

Moving Mountains once again provides the ‘system links’ for the money to work, and the Ulamba clinic to exist as part of the vision for health in the region.

Moving Mountains is the only NGO which supports Siaya District Hospital, and Adventure Alternative is the only company sending medical students there. Much of what you can see in these pictures was bought with money from both.

Reality of aid – sometimes it’s all about money, and there’s nothing you can do about it..

Sometimes there’s just no hope of self-sufficiency. In Siaya there are just too many people for too few hospitals with too few doctors, not enough money and not enough drugs. We just have to continue providing medical students for much needed personnel and income, and money for equipment.

Dophil Clinic – now in it’s 5th year Other clinics we send our medical students to are privately run and can expand with comparably small investment. Dr Phil is the manager and Doctor at Dophil and a man of almost superhuman dedication to his task. Dophil Clinic has been transformed over the years with our combination of income and capital. These pictures really warm the heart.

The most recent addition to Dophil has been an operating theatre built with funds (and the sweat and tears) from the Granaghan Outreach Group.

The building is in the process of being registered and filled with equipment, not an easy or quick task!

An example of good aid – “Never, ever, ever give up” Winston Churchill Dr Phil is an inspiration. He shoulders the burden of health in an area with an average of 1 Doctor for every 10,000 people. He never asked us for money. We came to him and gave him a chance to see his clinic become a small hospital. Against phenomenal odds Dophil Clinic has succeeded.

In Africa the problems often appear insurmountable, but equally as often the examples of indomitable willpower and selflessness are just as overwhelming. Good aid harnesses that human spirit and turns it into hope and success.

Africamp volunteers at work at our projects in Tigithi on the slopes of Mt Kenya

Fact: As with our work in Western Kenya, the local MP and Govt funding has suddenly also kicked in once they have seen what Moving Mountains has done! They have built them a new stone classroom and toilets and will continue alongside the efforts of MM. This joint effort is good aid.

First hand comment from Chris Little: “I met the old geezer who started the school in the 60’s who stood in the yard with a very large smile at the work in progress. It really moved the group of volunteers who saw first hand how MM has made a lasting difference. The region could do with a tree planting program which is cheap and will help greatly with the crop problems and also offset CO2 travel emissions.”

Another classroom finished by Moving Mountains at Tigithi..

Fact: putting in concrete floors means the children do not get attacked by ‘jiggers’.

This chigoe flea burrows into exposed skin and lays eggs, causing intense irritation. The skin lesion looks like a white spot with a central black dot, which are the flea's exposed hind legs and reproductive organs. This is an entry point for infection. Kenyans are very adept at digging the fleas out with a pin, but some children will have more than twenty in their feet, and they are simply unable to study because of the pain. Concrete floor means no more jiggers!

Michaels story: Michael was a twin born prematurely, but his brother died at 4 months. The mother was given a Cesarean section and the hospital bill was 150,000Ksh (£1200). The father ran away, so the community held a harambee (fundraiser) to pay the bill. Back at home, the Mum lost her crops (drought) and could not feed her children.

When MM became involved she was not coping at all well. Michael was born with rickets in his wrists. He also suffers from a testicular hernia which also causes a build up of fluid in his scrotum. When the pain gets too much his Mum must run to the hospital where they syringe the fluid out. MM put them on our Food and Living Allowance and paid for an operation due in January which will remedy the hernia and give him a pain-free life. The support has allowed her to feed her children with proper and nutritional food which means his wrists can develop properly. She has now moved to a bigger house.

A case in point: how we assess and start a support programme…

First of all study the background…

A slum dwelling family in Nyeri suffered a family loss and found themselves with nowhere to live. Another friend donated them a very small plot of land just above Tigithi. It is a very cold, windy, open and dry. The family arrived and first of all dug the grave for the dead father. The local people came to help and then charged the family something small thinking that they were wealthy. They soon realised that the opposite was the case and all returned the money.

Now they all live in a small house with a mud hut kitchen outside: the grandmother, her daughter and her grandson.

Another two daughters live in Nyeri where one is in hospital with a broken leg and ‘mental problems’. She kept ripping off the plaster and walking on it, but the leg is now pinned and recovering. The other daughter had been locked in a room by a man used as a sex slave. She escaped but was deeply traumatised. She suffers heavy periods and was sacked from her last job as a house girl for using too much toilet paper. The grandmother then lost her sight and is totally blind.

Then make the first contact…

When Andy MacDonald and Francis Kioni first visited the family they were struggling desperately. Life in the house is harsh due to the environment and the family’s problems. They had to beg other families in the area for food. The community has felt a lot of pity towards the family and helped where possible. The proposal was made to assist as a matter of urgency. This came from the Kenya Committee which informed UK trustees of the case. A decision was made with Andy on the ground. This is an important point because his costs (airfare etc) are paid for by Adventure Alternative.

The support…and the feedback Moving Mountains has given them a food and living allowance which has made a big difference to the family and now allows them to at least eat. The grand mother is being taken to an eye doctor. The daughter in hospital had her bill paid and there is no further need of MM input at present.

The other daughter is being given a blood test as Emma’s opinion is that she needs iron supplements. Emma Harley is a highly experienced paediatric staff nurse with a qualification in Tropical Medicine, and she is also in Kenya as an employee of Adventure Alternative. Her input is vital and possibly life-saving.

Their kitchen roof is leaking badly. Chris’s comment by email yesterday: “We have 6000/- left from the Moving Mountains building budget here at Tigithi. The idea is that we can use that to pay for some metal sheets and poles to give them a good roof. If there are a few more shillings left we can use this to buy some hardboard to line the grandmother’s bedroom to stop the wind and keep her a bit warmer at night.”

The lesson and the commerce/charity link…

We always use our Kenyan committee to assess situations. This case is so terrible for us Westerners to contemplate that we are invariably influenced by simple emotional response. Yet for Kenyans this sort of case is common. Who better then to assess and deal with it?

For Andy and Chris to be there, on the ground, providing the feedback and pictures, talking to the family and the Kenyan committee is invaluable, provides reassurance to our donors. They can also make decisions to divert funds. But the money that took them to Kenya is paid for by Adventure Alternative and that fulfils the ethics of the company.

Gavin’s comment:

We prop up more than just a roof…

Some people comment on the 60:40 ratio that we apply to donors who fundraise for projects with Moving Mountains.

60% of the money goes to the project they want to get involved with, and 40% goes towards our ongoing work in Kenya, like this Nyeri family and all the hundreds of people who benefit daily from our support. Some are desperate, like this family, while others benefit from a drip-feed support over many years. This is a very big part of our work.

I find myself sometimes having to defend this 40%, which is actually a far more important commitment than building a classroom. When we ‘take on’ a beneficiary, it is a real person and we have to be sure that we can fulfil our commitment to him or her for many years. That is the role of the charity, and the responsibility of the Trustees who have signed a document which ties them to that commitment.

Moreover, we are not a charity that makes the mistake of putting all our money into a structure, just to pander to the Western preference to “see how the money is spent”. That is a flawed thought borne from suspicion about corruption and a tarnished image of charities that have large administrative costs. We have no admin costs except for bank charges and I have set up the charity and the NGO to work in great harmony, with funding from my company, to do the best job.

Moving Mountains Kenya – the money…

I have been examining the audited accounts of Moving Mountains Kenya and it is interesting to see the increase in our funding over the past four years: 2005 we sent 3.5 millions shillings (£28,000) 2006 we sent 7.7 million shillings (£61,600) 2007 we sent 10.9 million shillings (87,200) 2008 we sent 16.4 million shillings (£131,200) In five years of donations amounting to £308,000 the total amount of administrative expenses in Kenya came to £399.00 which was for bank charges. The rest of the money went on the following expenditures – Primary School, Secondary School, College, Feeding programmes (and orphanage), food and living allowances, family support for house rent, medical expenses, Black Cats football school and project funding.

The project funding (every renovation and new build donated by various groups and generated ourselves) amounts to a total of 10.4 million shillings over five years, which is 27% of our total income.

Thanks to our donors!

Granaghan Outreach Charitable Trust, Swatragh, Northern Ireland Kayeiye School 2009 Dophil Theatre 2008 Wagwer School 2007

Nyasidhi School 2006

Daniel Wright, staff and pupils at King Edwards School, Bath, England Wagwer School 2007- 2009 Roche Pharmaceuticals, Ennis, Ireland Ulamba Clinic 2007 + upkeep costs Electronic Concepts Ltd, Oughterard, Ireland Ulamba Community Centre 2007 + upkeep costs YouthAid Kenya, Keady, Northern Ireland Kumuok School 2008 Wagai School 2009 Ben Clark Foundation, Northern Ireland Early Child Development Centre, Ulamba 2008 + upkeep costs George Watson’s College, Edinburgh Ulamba Orphanage extension and roofing Moving Mountains Ireland Monthly upkeep of Ulamba Orphanage Africamp from 2002 - 2009 Ulamba Orphanages Kayeiye School Wagai School Toilets, showers, play areas, water wells and many small projects!

Plus all the medical students, teachers, artisans, volunteers and friends from around the world who have helped to turn our long term vision into a reality.

Moving Mountains Kenya for managing all projects, building them and looking after the money!

Special thanks to Francis Kioni, project manager Ulamba Committee for looking after the Ulamba Centre and managing the staff Chris Little at Moving Mountains UK office who was given the task in 2002 of turning Ulamba into what it is today.

From the founder Gavin Bate: “All of this has been achieved by having a clear vision and strategy for what a charity can achieve, utilising money in a clever and relevant way, and providing long term training and development to the staff who manage the projects.

This was my vision in 1991 and I have stuck by it through thick and thin. The template I designed all those years ago is still working and I hope it will continue to work well into the future. Good aid is not about quantity, it’s about quality and integrity.”