Water quality mission in Kenya
A team of Tweed volunteers has returned from Kenya after completing a successful seven-week mission to improve health, education and water quality in an impoverished village.
Council’s Senior Construction Engineer Nigel Dobson joined the group as part of the Tweed Kenya Mentoring Program, to coordinate the construction of a dam which will provide clean water to more than 6000 people.
He said the dam project near the village of Obambo Kadenge was even more successful than originally planned.
“We were fortunate with the fall of the land and had a very good local contractor, which meant we ended up with a dam with a capacity of about 20 million litres ,almost double what we were expecting,” Mr Dobson said.
“This will be the main domestic water supply for people within a 6km radius and replaces a dam which was almost entirely silted over.
“The dam will also allow villagers to make use of SkyJuice SkyStation water treatment units which were installed on a previous visit.”
Mr Dobson is the fourth Council employee to visit Kenya as a volunteer with the Tweed Kenya Mentoring Program, a Council initiative to deliver water saving projects.
It uses the Tweed’s human, technical and financial resources to support an environmental education and safe water program in the informal settlements surrounding Nairobi and in poverty stricken rural areas.
Mr Dobson was joined by 12 volunteers, many of them Tweed residents, from the Kenya Health program, including his wife Tiffany Dobson and mother Helen Dobson.
The Kenya Health team held free clinics and visited schools and orphanages to teach about basic health and sanitation.
