Speak 31 aims to relieve poverty, meet critical physical and socio-emotional needs and improve the health and education of the people in impoverished villages and slum communities in Kenya. In part, this will be achieved by making grants of money to provide materials and services for improving sanitation facilities and access to clean water, in the form of boreholes, reservoir tanks and water kiosks.

16.6 million Kenyans don’t have access to clean, safe water. That’s 51% of Kenya’s population. Women and girls walk an average of 10km a day to collect water in huge containers and jerry cans to enable their families to drink, bathe and wash clothes.

Water is sourced from standpipes and water kiosks that are privately owned by national water suppliers, or by illegal vendors who use contaminated pipes through open drains. Water is expensive to buy – costing up to one third of the average daily income.

Lack of access to clean water has a severe impact on health often results in disease and mortality. More than 3,100 children die every year from preventable diseases, including diarrhoea, caused by unsafe water and sanitation.

There is a critical shortage of Water in urban slum communities like Kayole, and rural villages like Yuumbu and Kanthoroko.

We believe that everyone should have access to clean, safe water that is free from contamination. We aim to ensure that the villages of Kayole, Kanthoroko and Yuumbu have a safe water source but this can only be achieved through an improvement and expansion in accessibility to Kenya’s limited water sources. Water is essential to human survival. It is not a luxury. Water scarcity has compromised health, education and sanitation. We aim to break the cycle of poverty and change lives.

Photo by Riccardo Lennart Niels Mayer