On January 10th, 2008, we left for Tanzania with a promise to continue our work in the Kilimanjaro region. This time we added a new piece to our agenda. We made a decision that to best monitor the success of our work, we would do an initial health study of the receiving communities before implementing the Rain Catchment System. We would then re-examine them 6 months and a year later.

We armed ourselves with a professor of Epidemiology from University of Washington and an intern from Columbia University doing her masters degree in public health.

We interviewed 159 parents whose children attended the Kikwe Primary School - the school we selected to receive the rain water harvesting project. We examined 292 of the 500 students ranging in ages from 5 to 12 years old.

We found starvation, HIV/AIDS, parasites, water borne diseases, contaminated water sources and an extremely creative and motivated community.

We built a small lab and tested the water samples from all over the region as well as from 5 rain catchment systems we built in neighboring communities. The results we amazing. Click here to view the results.

Along with 14 masons from the village, we built an 80 000 liter Rain Catchment System.

We taught 50 farmers from the village to harvest the rain that fell on the ground to plant a food garden for the students. We purchased 300 liters of cooking pots for the school to prepare lunch for the students. As the farming committee plants the school farm, we helped to organize a committee to gather food from the parents to begin feeding the students immediately.

We ensured that 35 children received medical attention and nominated 10 families to receive national food relief aid.

We networked with another organization to begin HIV/AIDS education within Kikwe to both the Secondary school students as well as the families living with the disease.

After 3.5 weeks, we left Kikwe well on their way to empowerment and improvement.