Good health requires also access to energy

We analyze regularly the different challenges our farmer communities and underserved families in Western Kenya to understand better the barriers to more health and to identify what needs to be done to bring in the right solutions at the right time. We measure also the impact of the existing programs and measure the impact of against the basic 20 needs which we have identified together with the communities: shelter, hygiene, nutrition, energy … our belief? These basic needs link to each other and need to be solved if health and with health also life should become better for underserved communities.

That’s how we realized that the lack of energy is still one of the basic causes that have a huge impact on the daily life and health – in many ways. Energy plays a huge role in the houses, at work, at school. Cooking with gas instead of indoor cooking and indoor pollution, working water pumps to ensure purification and safe transport, cooling options, light in the evening for doing homework, safety issues… are just a few to be mentioned here.

Some month ago we connected to Don Bosco at Nairobi. They offer certified and high level 19- days- training session on biogas plants building onsite and agreed to support our communities in Western Kenya. The training course will be followed up by additional fresh up sessions and control visits later on, so that our trainees get real good skills and knowledge.

Now in August finally the training onsite has started: ten ambassadors from our MMH centers have come together for the next weeks to participate and to learn not just how to build biogas plants, but also about safety measurements and regular monitoring.

“Today we got the government certified hydrogeologists to our MMH site to establish the best location for drilling the borehole. We were fortunate to get the water points near the roads where it is easy to distribute to the community….”, shared Cleophas , leader from our local partner organisation Core Health and Wealth.

Our big learning as Making More Health working with underserved communities: : it’s worth to look holistically on the reality of underserved communities if we want real system changes in the world and sustainable health solutions. It’s worth to evolve from an ego system (from what we think is needed and what we want to solve) to real eco system approaches where complex and interlinked issues are solved because there is a need if changes should have a sustainable impact and simply because it matters.

Special thanks to our colleagues from the environment and safety department at Boehringer Ingelheim who helped to make his happen!