Grants
Featuring Common Ground Program (Kenya). Five-time Pangea grant winner
Common Ground Program in Kenya’s Rift Valley trains farmer’s groups (always women in Kenya) in Grow Biointensive® agricultural techniques. It also oversees Pathfinder Academy, a private primary school where children learn farming in addition to the national curriculum. Joshua Machinga, Common Ground's leader, is passionate about the need for Kenya’s farmers to improve their practices in order to have food security for all. Grow Biointensive techniques such as companion planting, composting, and special field preparation typically increase yield by 4 to 5 times. Thanks to Common Ground's training, many families are now growing enough food to supply all their family's vegetable needs, with enough left over to sell for extra income.
Pangea grants in 2005 and 2006 funded seeds and training for this agricultural program. Our grants also paid school fees for 14 orphans, furnished a new dormitory at the school, and supplied two fuel-efficient wood- With the new dormitory available, eighth grade students were encouraged to board for their last year of school, improving safety for girls who would otherwise have to walk long distances alone and boosting exam scores for all. The dormitory did double duty in 2008, housing students whose homes had been burned down during the Kenya post-election unrest. It was also "home" to two orphaned girls who have no relatives or guardians to stay with when school is not in session.
The 2006 grant also funded micro-credit training and small loans to members of community widows groups to support them in starting small sustainable businesses. Each small loan group went through two weeks training on writing their by-laws, electing leaders and learning about the program. They also learned business management skills and how to manage their individual projects. After saving as a group for three months, the members were eligible to receive loans. Each individual received a loan of about $100 or less to start or expand their small business and had one year to pay back the loan with a monthly repayment co-guaranteed by the group. Micro-businesses started by members included: baking, brickmaking, hairdressing, fish selling, distribution of cereals, kiosks and tea leaf selling, tailoring, knitting, embroidery, poultry keeping, clothing, bicycle taxi service, bicycle repair service, sheep rearing, handcrafts.
Pangea grants in 2007 and 2008 paid more than half the cost of a water project to drill a borehole inside the school compound, build a storage tank, and pipe water to a community water point outside the school gates. The project was sidelined for several months in early 2008 due to political unrest in Kenya and later by rising fuel prices. The borehole was finally completed in May 2009 and today the children of Pathfinder Academy and the women and girls in the surrounding community no longer have to walk four miles to fetch poor-quality water. Ready access to clean water is improving the health of the community and freeing the girls to spend more time on their studies.
All in all, Pangea's relatively small grants have had a large impact on the people in Kiminini, the community surrounding Common Ground. We've improved the living conditions of 80 boarding students, directly supported 14 orphans so they could stay in school, contributed to the food security program, underwritten part of the micro-credit program, and made access to clean water a reality. This project proves the effectiveness of Pangea's grantmaking approach: by working with grassroots organizations in the smallest communities, by honoring their knowledge of the best way to combat poverty, we can have a large impact with a small amount of money. We're proud have Joshua Machinga as our friend and to have been able to lend a hand to the people served by the program.