‘It’s just incredible’
Island fishermen and Rotary club raise $30,000 for Kenyans
A $10,407 contribution from a group of fishermen in western P.E.I. has triggered more than $30,000 of assistance for a small fishing island in Kenya.
Ted Grant, co-founder and president of Mikinduri Children of Hope, and Gaylene Smith, the foundation’s vice-president and program co-ordinator, recently visited Tignish Fishermen’s Co-op Royal Star Foods to accept the donation from member fishermen.
Accompanying Grant and Smith to Tignish was Paul Crant, president of the Rotary Club of Charlottetown, whose organization voted to donate $20,000 to the cause based on the fishermen’s contribution.
“It’s just incredible,” Grant said in summing up what the P.E.I.-based international organization can do for Kenyans with $30,000.
Mageta Island is in the Western Province, off the coast of the city of Bondo, where Mikinduri has an office. About 25 per cent of the 11,000 people who live on the island are afflicted with AIDS. Nearly half the students in one school are orphans.
“They have no money. They earn, on average, 70 cents a day,” said Grant, who noted that 75 per cent of their income is spent on food.
At $10 for a water taxi, people rarely get off their Island.
Royal Star’s contribution is proceeds from the sale of lobsters member fishermen donated to the cause.
Francis Morrissey, manager of Royal Star Foods, told Grant and Smith he’ll be encouraging fishermen across P.E.I. to support the cause next year, expressing hopes of raising $100,000.
“When I look at it, there’s really no reason for those kids to be going hungry,” Morrissey said, suggesting that with irrigation and making use of composted seaweed for fertilizer, families will become self-supportive.
“I know it’s easy to say, but when you don’t have any money to get started, not even a bucket to carry water in, then it’s not too easy.”
Grant, who founded the foundation in 2003 and visited Mikinduri for the first time in 2004, is grateful for the support.
He acknowledges education and a constant supply of clean drinking water are keys to helping residents improve their lives.
“The first thing we are going to be doing is treating the water; getting them good, clean water, because, if you’re drinking filthy water, dirty water, you can’t go to work. You can’t get out of bed. You can’t go to school,”
Grant emphasized.
Mikinduri Children of Hope is relying on the UPEI School of Sustainable Engineering to design a pipeline for moving water from the lake to the schools, and will make use of sand filters to purify the water.
A team will be heading there in February to help dig a pipeline to supply water from polluted Lake Victoria.
Latrines are being replaced with compostable toilets and the waste subsequently used for fertilizer. The foundation, while still providing support in Mikinduri, expanded its programs to Western Province last year. They’ve started a feeding program at the five schools on Mageta Island, providing 3,000 children with one meal a day. They’ve also started school gardens that parents help maintain. Students get to bring home food from the gardens and parents learn how to grow food in their home gardens.
“That community is going to change and change fast,” Grant predicted.
“I mean, in two or three years this place is going to be a changed place.”