10th November 2019
Our thanks go to Michael Ginn of the Rotary Club of Billericay who has sent us this report of a Community Filter being put to good use in Kenya.
The Diocese of Chelmsford is linked with the Diocese of Embu in Kenya. Rev Margaret Fowler, Associate Priest in the Billericay & Little Burstead Team Ministry, is a member of the Rotary Club of Billericay and has made many visits to Embu. She takes a particular interest in children’s education and welfare. The Bishop of Embu, Rt Rev David Muriithi Ireri, recently visited the Diocese of Chelmsford and was a visiting speaker at our club, for which he thanked God.
The failure of rains has meant that parts of the Diocese of Embu have had no clean drinking water, only dirty river water. Because I am Aquabox Ambassador for Essex, I have an inside track and for Margaret’s next visit to Embu, I was able to contact the Aquabox organisation and procure a Community Filter which was transported by Margaret on her recent flight to Nairobi.
Margaret took the filter with her when she spoke at the Rotary Club of Embu. The water filter has now been allocated to a community in Gatama, a remote dry area where it can do most good and it is now in action.
As a parallel action, the Rotary Club of Billericay is paying for a borehole to be dug to access clean groundwater in Ciamanda, a village in the foothills of Mount Kenya. If this is successful, five Rotary Clubs who are twinned with our club (one in Essex, one in Sweden, one in France and two in Italy) will pay for five other boreholes to be dug in other water poor villages.
Michael Ginn
Rotary Club of Billericay