Kenya Project Background

I thought it may be helpful to provide a brief background on what the ultimate goal is and why we’re lucky enough to be in Kenya right now. For the last five or six years, Gonzaga has been involved with developing a center in West Africa called the Songhai Center. This center is a self-sustaining community where sustainable practices such as biogas and rotation of crops are displayed and employed where people from surrounding communities can come and learn in a hands on fashion. This way, the technologies and practices can then be taken back to other communities to improve living standards and independence.

A humanitarian project in Spokane called the Small World Educational Foundation (SWEF) approached Gonzaga and proposed an Eastern African application of the Songhai Center. The intent of this center is to have associated with it a self sustained business that will make and sell water filters. After finding a professor to support the project and initiate the grant writing, the mission was under way and our team was handpicked to lay the groundwork. Our teams contribution over the past year was to take a systems approach to Kitale and the surrounding areas to determine what issues are present and how best to mitigate these problems. Because East Africa is much different from West Africa, we had to develop new technologies and solutions that were applicable to the target area. Our solutions involved a windmill, solar water heater, rain water catchment and a grain drying bin all made with locally available materials and practices.

The next step to be taken by Gonzaga (and the next Senior Engineering Design Team) is to design the educational facility and dormitory in such a way that they can be entirely self-sustained using these technologies as well as utilizing the Water Filter Manufacturing Facility as added income and education for common shop technologies. The construction site we have is large enough for all of these buildings, but is still empty as of today. The main goal for this summer is to construct a simple steel building to act as the temporary Filter Manufacturing plant. Our team has been sent along in order to provide some feedback on the construction, as well as to the future design team, on how everything might mesh best. We’re also hoping to piece together a short promotional documentary to help the Gonzaga find some deep, humanitarian oriented pockets to help fund the construction of the other buildings.