LPK Gnong Hills
Living Positive Kenya (LPK) is the first organization we made contact with in Africa. Originally, when my son Dan and I came to Kenya in January 2014, we planned to purely volunteer with the HIV+ women in Mary Wanderi's LPK program, and maybe scope out areas where irrigation systems could be implemented on the side. We soon realized that the farm that LPK owns and operates was a prime spot in which to demonstrate our pump. Mary uses this farm to teach the women in the program, many of whom have lived their whole lives in the slum, basic farming techniques that they can then implement on small scale plots in and around their homes. The food grown is also used as a revenue source for LPK, specifically helping to fund the daycare program and the 120 children that attend it.
The farm itself has a large field of maize being grown, a garden with many native vegetables, and a full sized greenhouse that is being used to grow onions. Because of the close relationship we formed with Mary and LPK, we decided this would be a good site to add some additional infrastructure that would both help the profitability of the farm and also help us experiment with various pump applications. We know any tests we run at this site will be closely monitored and feedback will be provided, which is a key component of the design-test-redesign chain. For this reason we helped build a large fishpond/rainwater reservoir that can be used to irrigate the greenhouse and fields in times of drought. Our aeration system and bio-filter pump applications will also be implemented in the fishpond.
Living Positive Kenya (LPK) is the first organization we made contact with in Africa. Originally, when my son Dan and I came to Kenya in January 2014, we planned to purely volunteer with the HIV+ women in Mary Wanderi's LPK program, and maybe scope out areas where irrigation systems could be implemented on the side. We soon realized that the farm that LPK owns and operates was a prime spot in which to demonstrate our pump. Mary uses this farm to teach the women in the program, many of whom have lived their whole lives in the slum, basic farming techniques that they can then implement on small scale plots in and around their homes. The food grown is also used as a revenue source for LPK, specifically helping to fund the daycare program and the 120 children that attend it.
The farm itself has a large field of maize being grown, a garden with many native vegetables, and a full sized greenhouse that is being used to grow onions. Because of the close relationship we formed with Mary and LPK, we decided this would be a good site to add some additional infrastructure that would both help the profitability of the farm and also help us experiment with various pump applications. We know any tests we run at this site will be closely monitored and feedback will be provided, which is a key component of the design-test-redesign chain. For this reason we helped build a large fishpond/rainwater reservoir that can be used to irrigate the greenhouse and fields in times of drought. Our aeration system and bio-filter pump applications will also be implemented in the fishpond.