By Martin M. Irungu | Executive Director
Introduction
The last quarter of 2025 marked significant progress for the Social Innovation Eco Village Enduata (SIEVE) project and presented challenges as well as a showcase of resilience and sustainability.
This phase marked the kickoff of construction of the SIEVE heritage center using natural building techniques such as cob houses and traditional Maasai houses, drilling of water, training and hosting EARN permaculture expert for the establishment of the SIEVE permaculture demonstration farm. The project also grappled with substantial challenges from two failed attempts to drill water which is a crucial resource for the Eco Village self-sustainance. Despite these drawbacks, the project explored alternatives showcasing its adaptive capacity and commitment showcasing resilience and fostering sustainability.
Construction of the SIEVE Heritage Center
The Heritage Center is an important section of the Heritage center as it is central to directly engaging the local community in promoting the rich cultural heritage of the Maasai community. It's a place for story telling and dances, livelihood resilience projects such as modern beadwork work women, equipment of local youth with digital and entrepreneurship skills and provision of in-residence participants for young girls from far.
Key infrastructures built at the heritage center includes:
The construction of the resource room, training room and the two cottage houses was built using cob house technique which is a natural building technique and eco friendly. It utilizes natural and locally sourced materials such sand, clay soil, cow dung, straw and water.
The construction of the cob houses was led by Mr. Wilson Kimutai an experienced cob builder while the local community led by women played a vital role in bringing in their indigenous construction knowledge to enhance their traditional maasai houses. On the other hand, 15 women from Enduata Community led the sourcing of local materials such as sticks from specifically selected tree varieties, straw, clay soil and cow dung to build the traditional Maasai house.
The traditional Maasai house is not only a house for our beneficiaries and visitors to stay but also an integral structure for learning and preservation of the rich cultural traditions of the Maasai that are currently fading away. To further integrate traditional and sustainable construction approaches, we conducted a two-day cob building workshop for community members. The training was well received and demonstrated strong potential as a culturally appropriate and durable alternative for improving local housing compared to other emerging construction methods.
Water Harvesting and Storage
Water is an important resource for the functionality of the SIEVE project and Enduata community. With the area receiving an average of 250mm of rainfall each year there is need to irrigate crops and trees planted at the Eco Village and for overall use.
To tap on rainfall water, we have installed gutters around all constructed buildings to harvest rainwater through the building roofs that are channeled to tanks for distribution across the Eco Village. So far we have 32,000 litres of water storage capacity that lasts us between rains.
To further supplement our water storage capacity we dug a 200,000 litres storage capacity water pan to harvest rain water runoff. The water pan will be lined with a liner to prevent water seepage and increase the amount of water retained in the water pan.
SIEVE Permaculture Demo Farm Establishment
Through our partnership with the Earth Allies Restoration Network (EARN) we kicked off the implementation of the demo farm designed by our staff members during their training at MainSprings Tanzania. Mr. Lazaro Paruason, an experienced permaculture expert from EARN visited SIEVE for a 3-day visit to provide guidance and oversee the initial set up of the permaculture demonstration farm. During his visit we managed to set up swales to slow, sink and spread rain water runoff harvesting it for use to regenerate and use at the demo farm. We also planted a variety of fruit trees, timber, nitrogen fixing and biomass trees along the swales. Among other activities was soil testing, digging of a water pan on site to capture rain water
As a key component of the demonstration farm, we held a training session with 15 women form Enduata Community to introduce them to permaculture showcasing key important activities for the initial set up of a new farm taking account of starting by capturing the most important resource for any farm- water.
Landscaping
For easy accessibility, beautification and enhancement of the SIEVE landscape, we did a number of different landscaping activities as follows; enhanced our main access road through marraming, planting of trees along the access road and at the heritage center and created paths for easy accessibility around the Eco Village.
SIEVE Next Steps
Call for Support
The SIEVE project is calling upon all our supporters, friends of our supporters, partners and stakeholders to contribute their resources both financially and in kind towards the realization of the SIEVE project mission of building resilient communities.
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By Martin Irungu | Project Leader
By EMPOWER AND SERVE | PROJECG LEADER
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