Provide clean water for Akili Girls School, Kenya

Dear  Donors,

We have come to the successful end of the final semester of the year at Akili School. We thank you all so much for your incredible generosity that saw us provide clean water for all the 44 girls at the boarding school for the entire school year. For the entire year, no student at Akili School fell ill due to contaminated water as was the case in the preceding years. Your generous donations ensured that we installed massive water tanks and harvested over 50,000 litres of water for the girls. We also had enough water for our gardens and through sustainakility club, the girls grew different vegetables and sweet potatoes thereby providing 100% of the schools vegetable needs! The girls learnt a lot about small scale farming and sustaining their school. 

We saved upto $200 that we used to spend to purchase water every term. This was directed to meet other important costs of feeding the girls at the boarding school.

As we prepare to welcome 15 more girls to the boarding school, we feel that the current water will suffice. We are now directing all our attention and energies into building a LITERACY GARDEN aimed at developing the knowledge, skills and talents of marginalized rural girls and children to promote literacy, food security, environmental stewardship and healthy lifestyle and nutrition through establishing a literate environment for girls and children in a farm setting in South West Kisumu Kenya.

Riley Orton Foundation is committed to improving literacy and through this contributing to nation building and sustainable development. This project will provide a safe and inspiring space; an open library in a garden setting where girls and children can meet everyday after school to improve their literacy skills, learn how to write, share their stories with the world, and learn how to value their own and other people’s stories. They will also learn how to grow food using simple small scale solutions based on permaculture and other regenerative agriculture practices. They will have the opportunity to prepare different meals in the farm kitchen, reduce stress through yoga at the garden, develop their talents in music, drama, dance and public speaking, and learn numeracy skills through pretend play shops at the garden.More info about this work is available here https://www.rileyortonfoundation.org/about3.html

We invite you to continue partnering with us by giving here https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/akiligardenandsports/

Thank you so much for your partnership and commitment to create access to free education to underprivileged girls. We couldnt have done it without you!

Dear Friends,

“My school looks smart and it is big. First we have green vegetables and green trees in our school. We also have classroom block, kitchen and dorms. In our school we like watering the plants like mango trees and oranges. We drink clean water and bath with clean water. In our school we always use water carefully we don’t waste water like those who don’t use common sense." says Jovlet when asked about her school.

Jovlet is 9 years old and in 4th grade, this being her 2nd year since she joined Akili Girls Boarding School. As a member of Sustain-Akility Club, Jovlet and her friends have learned how to grow their own food to sustain Akili School.

With the help of Akili staff, the girls have reclaimed land from rocky ground at the school and established small garden plots where they grow capsicums, kale, spinach, common night shade, cow piece, tomatoes, beans, sweat potatoes, comfry, lemon grass, mangoes, papaya, oranges, zucchini and water melons.

Last term, 100% of the vegetables used at Akili school were produced by the girls themselves.

The water tanks at the school have ensured that we can harvest rain water which the girls use for drinking, bathing and watering their gardens.

The about 50,000 litres we harvested and stored lasted us almost 3 months. We ran out of water one week to the end of school semester and were forced to close the school and send girls home since we dint have funds to purchase water to support extended stay of the girls. We were lucky that the girls had just finished their end of term exams and the elections were also around the conner.

We therefore continue to reach out to friends and wellwishers in the hope that one day we will be able to drill a well at the school and provide a permanet solution to our water crisis.

We thank you for your continued support.

Thank you

Dear Donors,

Akili Girls are back to school this week after a one-month holiday break. we are very happy to reunite with them again. Thanks to the torrential rains, all our water tanks are full to the brim and we have enough rain water to take us for the next three months. Thank you so much for helping us to purchase these water tanks. We are hopeful that we will raise funds to drill the well by the end of the year.

We were also happy to meet Mike of GlobalGiving Org when he visited our project site in Kisumu and saw first hand the great work are doing

thank you all for your support.

God bless you

Dear Donors,

Hope this finds you well.

I'm happy to report that we successfully resumed classes for the start of 1st term in January 2017. We also admitted 16 more girls to the boarding school.

There has been severe drought here and it has really affected our farming activities. We used most of the water from our roof catchment to water our sustainable farms at the Obambo Campus during the months of November and December as the students were home for Christmas Holidays. We however had to stop watering the farms when we noticed persistent drought. we had thought it would rain occassionally and replenish the water we use in the farms.

Our boarding school now has about 40 students and this means they are now using a lot of water every week unlike last year. After a long dry spell, it recently rained heavily for a day and our tanks got filled up saving us from buying water from kisumu town.

We will continue to reach out to our friends and raise the funds we need to drill this well by the end of the year 2017.

We thank you for all your contributions and support that has enabled us to provide clean water through our underground water tanks and thereby keeping all the 40 girls in School.

Thank you

God bless you.

Hi Friends,

We are trusting that you are all well.

We have recently come to a successful end of third and final semester of the year. Our girls are therefore home for Christmas holidays and will report back to school in January 2017.

We are happy to share that we managed to finish building sustainable showers at the boarding school. By using waste water bottles, used tiles from previous construction work and natural stones, we significantly reduced the cost of construction.

With the construction of the showers, we are now able to save upto 300 litres of water daily. As the girls shower using biodegradable soap, the water is collected through a system that is filtered through a bamboo/reed bed, providing water to water our fruit trees and kitchen gardens.We have started harvesting the vegetables which are prepared for the girls in our school kitchen ensuring that they can eat fresh and healthy food.

We continue to raise funds to drill the well following the last hydrogeological survey. Although the underground water tanks have been very crucial in providing stable water supply to the school, our water needs are expected to increase in January when we admit 21 new girls from Obunga slum/campus.

It is our prayer that we will be able to drill the well by January 2017.

We are excited to meet our volunteer and friend Ali Osborne who successfully raised over $20,000 to build classrooms at Akili School. She is visiting again in December for the Akili School Open Day.

We sincerely thank each one of you who have donated to ensure that our girls can have clean and safe water at the school. Together we will make this dream possible and help not only our girls, but the entire community with the water well. As we work to make Akili School a food forest, constant supply of water will go allowing way in ensuring abundant food supply for our girls all year round.

Your support is changing the lives of underprivileged girls in our community.

Here are some of the stories of the lives your support is transforming:

Lilian's story

Harriet's story

Loretta's story

Thank you, God bless you

Best Regards,

David