PROJECTS
2025 - Visit
In October 2025 a group of eight people visited Kyangala to see the work of the charity, take an active part in community life and see first hand what still needs to be done.
The visit was led by John Harrison and Paul Tyler, both trustees and consisted of Don Aurthurson, Amanda Green, Dr Helen Coleman, Professor Geoff Maitland, Peter Crawford and Rosie Rice PhD student .
During our stay we engaged with local schools and churches and enjoyed performances by pupils and choirs and dance troupes. Given the expertise of the visiting members, we held workshops on choral music, climate change, and period poverty.
Over the past year we have funded the construction and commissioning of two more boreholes (No. 5 & 6) and water storage tanks to address water scarcity. These cost a total of £34,000. The boreholes were officially opened by the Minister for Irrigation and Water.
Whilst in Kyangala we participated in community ceremonies celebrating these milestones which are providing easier access to clean water.
Paul, Don, Amanda, John, Helen, Rosie, Geoff, Peter
Peter Crawford leading the choral workshop
assisted by Don and Rosie
Professor Geoff Maitland and Don Arthurson leading the climate change workshop
Dr Helen Coleman and Amanda Green
leading the period poverty workshop
Clean water tanks
2025 - Eye Care Initiative
As a result of a request from the local committee in Kyangala we started an initiative we called Eye Care . This initiative is to provide used spectacles to improve eyesight of those in need in the community. It is recognised as a highly cost-effective health intervention for poverty alleviation. Research shows every $1 spent yields $36 in benefits in low/middle-income countries.
We collected over 700 pairs of spectacles from UK donors and have entered into partnership with a local optician to match spectacles to need in Kyangala. The photograph shows Paul and John handing over the spectacles to Optica.
2025 - Future Projects
As a result of the visit and through discussions with the local committee we have agreed upon the following projects :
-
Kyangala Township Primary Toilets Refurbishment .
-
Ullani Primary School Refurbishment
-
Mutui Medical Centre Refurbishment
-
Expand the Eye Care Initiative
-
Expand the period poverty initiative throughout the area
The team were specifically to increase the level of support to the community through the Hardship Fund to meet the immediate needs of the poorest in the community.
The team during the safari following the time in Kyangala .
From left to right : Helen, Rosie, Paul, Mandy, Don, Geoff, Peter, John
2025 - Video & Photo Gallery
2024 - Borehole
The fundraising target for the first of two boreholes was achieved in April 2024 after which we have tendered and awarded a contract for the installation work for a 190 metre deep borehole to provide a plentiful supply of water for the two schools and members of the local community in Kyangala.
The drilling took place in July 2024 and the completed borehole was commissioned by John Harrison on the 17th July 2024 at a ceremony in Kyangala . The ceremony was attended by the local community leaders, the chief, the local area administrators, the school heads and chairman of the board of management plus pupils and teachers from the school and local dignitaries.
The ceremony was a very joyous occasion and consisted of much singing, prayers, many speeches, music, dancing and a ceremonial turning on of the water supply and sharing of the water.
The borehole will transform the lives of hundreds of people in the Kyangala area who now have easy and unrestricted access to plentiful, fresh , clean and good tasting water and it is hard to underestimate how thankful the people of Kyangala are for it.
The borehole cost £15,000 which includes the installation of the borehole, the pump, a solar panel and storage tanks. It is intended that there will also be some local distribution pipes and taps installed over the next few months.
Photo gallery : position you mouse over the image and use the arrows to move forward and back. Click to open an image.
Borehole
Video1
Video2
Video3
2023
A trip to Kyangala was made in October 2023 by members of Holy Trinity Church , Leamington Spa , one of the churches supporting Kyangala Trust .The visit consisted of Rev Esther Peers , Poppy Peers, Don Arthurson, Paul Tyler all accompanied by John Harrison. During the trip visits were made to see the work of Kyangala Trust at the medical centre, primary school, boys school and girls school as well as visiting the many families who have benefitted from the hardship fund.
Projects funded by the Hardship Fund
This is the house belonging to Mr & Mrs Musyoka , when we last saw them they were living in a one room with 4 children , which Kyangala Trust repaired. Now Kyangala Trust has paid for a two-bedroom house with lounge and separate kitchen.
100 years old!!
This old lady, Lina Nthanze is 100 years old and lives in a one room house. She is looked after by her two daughters. Kyangala Trust has paid for regular medication and hospital visits.
Extract from WhatsApp blog....
A team of four members of Holy Trinity church in Leamington Spa flew to Nairobi, met John Harrison (the founder of Kyangala Trust), and then travelled on to our hotel base in the town of Machakos in the well-used minibus hired for our time in Kenya. Though we appeared to be the only white people in town the people of Machakos were welcoming, as were all Kenyans we met.
Kyangala is an hour’s drive from Machakos with half of the journey on dirt tracks. The Kenyan trustees in Kyangala provided a program of visits for each of the four days spent there which inevitably changed. Flexibility is a key skill when visiting Kyangala with the trust. We were shown the work done by the trust in the primary, girls’, and boys’ secondary schools, which highlighted the difference in the money available for government funded and parent funded schools. All the schools received books thanks to a donation from Holy Trinity. The girls’ school has won national dancing competitions and at the farewell meeting we were treated to some fabulous dancing and singing from each school.
The home visits showed how the hardship fund had helped or could help people with physical, medical, and mental issues as no safety net is provided by the government. One family of six had a house built to replace their one room building
Boys Dormitories
Hardship Fund
During COVID fund raising was more complicated but we still managed to raise sufficient funds to pay for the refurbishment of the boys school dormitories. The dormitories sleep 150 boys and the refurbishment consisted of a new roof, new floor, structural repairs to walls, new doors and windows plus a new external toilet block.
The hardship fund was used to provide grain to the poorest in the community . The photos below show the grain being collected by some of the community residents.
2018
Working visit
John and Will led a working trip out to Kyangala which saw seven of us travel out to Kenya: Sonia and two of her children JJ and Kate, plus Catherine ,a schoolteacher, and another Kate who at the time was a defence solicitor but is now running her own business offering meditation retreats, all brought their skills.
Catherine used her time and skills in the junior school, which seemed to be where her priority was focused. Kate spread her time equally between visiting the local community, digging foundations for the temporary incinerator, and working in the kitchens. Sonia spent time in the local community and used her skills to firstly realise the needs of the medical centre then address them, with storage solutions for the medical supply room and recovering seats in the waiting room.
JJ helped with building the temporary incinerator and the ‘lean to’ on the back of the medical centre, but more valuable was that he used his knowledge of poultry and showed some of the local community how to build chicken coups. This is for a ‘chicken/egg’ small business which the Kyangala Trust local committee had started.
2016
Fact Finding visit
What was a return visit for Luci and WIll, was also another honeymoon trip, for Rose and David. This trip, however, was to be a much quieter one with less physical work and more local meetings, working in the schools and visits to members of the community and in particular beneficiaries of the charity. We were determined to set up a local Kyangala Trust, in Kyangala, giving the community much more agency, enabling the funds raised to be directed where they thought they would be best served, rather than where we thought they needed them.
During this trip it was decided that we should fund building the rest of the secondary girls’ school. The government had started the work some years before and no progress had been made since our last visit in 2014 and so we completed the project. In addition, in conjunction with the local committee it was decided that the most urgent need was for an increase in the hardship fund and monies to help the poorest in the community with food, medical expenses, school fees and clothing.
2014
Honeymoon! (by William Neville)
This was set to be a trip of a lifetime, and not only for the happy couple, Luci and Will : the news of our plans of travel to Kyangala for their honeymoon seemed to be infectious, and twelve members of the congregation decided to join us, including the vicar of St Mary’s Church , Newport, Essex.
Our main objective was to help the local community start a longer-term project which was to refurbish one of their junior schools. The feeling was that most of the refurbishment could be undertaken by unskilled work force, but some of it would have to be finished by local building contractors. During the week we screeded a classroom floor; replaced the windows, including glazing; supplied and fitted a new door and decorated inside and out.
Over ten days a dozen of us managed to inspire the community so that when we returned in 2016 three more classrooms had been completed by parents, the local Kyangala Trust committee and by the teachers.
