Trip report Februari 2024

In March this year, a doctor and a nurse from the Netherlands investigated the health and dental condition of the 269 children aged 4-7, from the five kindergartens in Kasemeni. The results were worrying; a lot of underweight, anaemia and worms were seen, and the dental condition of many children was dramatic.

This led to projects being launched to greatly improve the availability of sufficient and varied food for the children. Better dental care will be addressed at a later stage. During our brief visit to the region in June 2024, we laid the groundwork. We also followed the renovation of the primary school in Kasemeni and the development of a number of micro-credit projects. Click on this post to read more about our plans.

The year 2023 was another eventful year for our foundation, in which a lot has happened and a lot has been achieved. We are getting to know the two communities of Bang’a and Kasemeni better and better and in the past year we have once again been able to support the residents with impactful projects. For example:
• Building and furnishing a new primary school in Mzuri
• Goat and chicken projects
• School furniture Kasemeni
• Sustainable horticulture

In our Annual report 2023 you can find all the information about these and many other projects. You can get to the report by clicking on this news item.

In November 2023, we visited our foundation’s projects in the Kwale region.

In our visit report, you can read about the new primary school, which will start in January 2024, being equipped with school furniture transported to Mzuri by a large sea container from Friesland. And we give an update on the status of our water, horticulture, chicken and goat projects and an update on the care post in Kasemeni.

Click on this news item for our visit report. Enjoy reading!

250 children from the Mzuri region will start their new primary school in early 2024, thanks to our foundation. Until now, education was out of reach for them, due to the long distances to the now nearest school in Kasemeni.

The school furniture came from a number of primary schools in the Netherlands, which no longer needed it. For the unfortunately high cost of transport to Mzuri, we started a crowdfunding campaign. Click on the project for more information.

A start was made in July on greening the area around the dispensary in Kasemeni, by planting a large number of saplings. In time, these trees will provide shade and cooling. And, not unimportantly, planting trees contributes to combating climate change. A good initiative by the Board of Management of the dispensary.

If all goes according to plan, every child in the Mzuri region will soon be able to attend elementary school. The existing school in Kasemeni is out of reach for a large group of children from the region because of the long distances between school and home. Walking 3 hours twice a day, often in the burning sun, means in practice that many children do not attend school. Fortunately, this will change starting with the new school year, in January 2024. In recent weeks, plans for a new elementary school have been finalized and the first construction work has begun. The project will cost around €160,000.- For a small part of those costs we are still looking for donors. Click on the project for more information.

In early February 2023, the board adopted a policy plan, outlining our plans for the period 2023 2025. If you want to learn more about the ways in which our foundation intends to support the communities of Bang’a and Kasemeni in the coming years and what is needed to do so, please read on here.

Annette’s Women Group was able to start a chicken project with the help of our foundation and of KS Foundation. A total of seven chicken coops have been built, including water tanks. There are also sufficient financial resources to purchase new chicks and the necessary feed in the coming weeks.

In October I visited Bang’a and Kasemeni again, took a closer look at our projects and, together with the local population, investigated what the next steps should be. The projects are generally going well, but it also shows again and again how much work still needs to be done.

In 2021, the Saidia Kwale Foundation in Bang’a had a basin (locally they call this a ‘dam’) built for the storage of water during the rainy season. Much needed because climate change is hitting this part of Africa hard.