When volunteering in Kenya, you’ll work with our in-country partner ACCESS Kenya in Naro Moru, Kenya. ACCESS Kenya works to improve the environment as well as water and education resources in the community.
About The Trip:
DWC’s Kenyan partner, ACCESS (Action Crew on Community Environment for Sustainable Services) Kenya, is a non-profit group based out of Naro Moru village at the base of Mount Kenya. This organization is focused on education and protecting the environment, as well as raising awareness at the problems that come with deforestation. ACCESS Kenya strives to safeguard water that is much needed for people and wildlife to survive.
ACCESS Kenya has built and refurbished school classrooms, assisted at regional orphanages, constructed community water tanks and planted thousands of trees to restore life-sustaining forests. With a strong base of sustainable development and community project management aimed at alleviating poverty, ACCESS Kenya strives to improve life for people in the Naro Moru region through community-driven works.
ACCESS Kenya was started in 2004 by a local group of volunteers who realized that prolonged droughts and deforestation were affecting the ability of people to thrive in the region. The lack of adequate learning facilities in the area has also become a focal point of the organization’s goals and priorities. Read more here: http://accessvolunteergroup.org/
It’s Not All Work:
A small market town of roughly 3,000 people in central Kenya, Naro Moru survives mainly on tourism, with hikers headed to nearby Mount Kenya and wildlife lovers taking their cameras to the Solio Game Reserve, the Mau Mau cave and other natural sights. Naro Moru is also close to the Rift Valley, which is where Kenya’s wildlife really flourishes. It’s a stop well worth it on a weekend or an add-on trip after volunteering with ACCESS Kenya and DWC.
Climatewise, Kenya is close to the equator and has a pleasant, tropical climate with daytime temperatures averaging between 24°C and 29°C. Humidity is high and the rain is sometimes heavy on a daily basis, although it seldom lasts the whole day. Of course, it’s never easy to predict the weather, but consider this a rough guide.
Learn more from our volunteers. Read their Kenya blogs. »
The Project:
Volunteers will be building a system to support a school garden that will provide food for children who often only get one meal a day. Those children often have difficulty focussing on their studies because of hunger.
The goal is to harvest rain water for schools to use in a garden at the school. Items used in this project would be gutters, water tanks, pipes and fittings. The school leaders want to make the lunch program self sustaining by growing their own food so that meals can be provided to all children. By volunteering in Kenya, you can work to help alleviate their concerns. Kenya itself is still heavily reliant upon agriculture for its economic success; tea, coffee, sisal, corn and wheat are among the main crops grown in the highlands, while coconuts, pineapples, cashews, cotton and sugarcane are harvested in the lower areas. This dependency on agriculture makes ACCESS Kenya’s goals of improving water resources and restoring deforested areas even more important to the people of the region and the country as a whole, especially since most agriculture is reliant upon rainwater.
When / Itinerary:
- Saturday, March 2 and Sunday, March 3 – Team arrives in Kenya; check in to hotel
- Monday, March 4 to Friday, March 8 – PROJECT WORK in Naro Moru
- Saturday, March 9 to Sunday, March 10 – Free days for some R and R
- Monday, March 11 to Friday, March 15 – PROJECT WORK in Naro Moru
- Saturday, March 16 – Transport to airport and fly home or continue your travels in Kenya
FAQs:
DWC Team Leader:
Ray Fowell
Ray was born hundreds of years ago in the UK and lived in Yorkshire. He spent most of his early life chasing the material dream. By the age of 37, he had achieved it, or so he thought. Then after a couple of life-changing events, he realized that life was not all it’s cracked up to be. Materialism was left behind and in its place came time to enjoy life.
Ray has worked on 22 projects around the world between 2005 and 2016. He has trav-elled extensively throughout Europe, Canada and America. In May of 2016, he led a DWC team to the hot and dry Rajasthan area in India, where they built a water-retention structure in 45C-plus heat, danced with the locals and saw the country as few foreigners can in a couple of weeks.
“I take my position as a team leader very seriously and strive to give my team members the best experience both in the build up to, and the time they spend in country. I aim to build a team that will work hard and play hard together, and one that is fun loving and adven-turous. I must get something right as I seem to have a lot of repeat players joining my projects.
I look for awesome ‘can do’ and ‘what I can do to help’ attitudes, and openness to, and respect for, cultural and religious diversity within the team as well as the community we will be working.”
Are You Ready To Go?
Want more information about this trip? Email DWC at [javascript protected email address] or apply now using our online application.
You can secure your place on this trip with a $500, non-refundable deposit that will go toward your total trip cost. After you’ve submitted your forms and deposit, our office will contact you and send you a welcome package.
We’re glad to have you join us.
Still have some questions? We’re here to help, please feel free to contact us now, or fill out the form.