Fanya Mambo Projects

Children Recycling Plastics Program is designed to address critical problems of urban waste, urban decay, joblessness and lack of job skills training. Developed and run by local citizens, the program is designed to educate school children and community members around the slums in most urban setups about recycling and the possibilities of transforming common waste into useful structures for the benefit of participating communities.

The project conducts urban renewal building projects using recycled materials to benefit low-income communities and implements a multi-pronged approach to address intertwined and critical issues of concern to most urban dwellers, particularly those in the poorest communities (slum areas).  This program works to improve the urban landscape in Kenya by building needed educational and civic projects such as benches for school programming and meals, educational shelters, and security walls.  Each of these projects are accomplished with the exclusive use of green technologies and methods that reduce waste, encourage recycling, train individuals with a trade skill and provide employment opportunities.  Thus, the peripheral benefits are vast and meaningful.

Through the program, we give presentations and hold workshops on the environmental impact of carelessly disposed used plastic bags and bottles in primary schools and communities around the slum areas of Nairobi and other major towns. When implementing each specific project, we always organize a community cleanup exercise through which participating community members get  the opportunity to learn hands-on how to transform common garbage into useful structures. School children also get special education on recycling and Eco-block production.

In and around the city of Nairobi where the program currently focuses, there are a number of schools rapidly becoming overcrowded with the recent establishment of universal free primary education.  As another result of these new laws, children are required to stay on school grounds during the lunch hour as opposed to going home to eat.  Because they are forced to stay on campus, and the impoverished schools are not equipped with cafeterias or dining facilities, the students must eat their lunches outside on the ground.  The dust, dirt and litter debris blowing across the school grounds become a part of their daily afternoon meals.  Impoverished schools are continually becoming more crowded and need an inexpensive resource to obtain proper facilities.  The eco-brick projects constructed by the Fanya Mambo team provides these schools with more adequate facilities they are desperately in need of, such as the bench set ensembles, allowing students to enjoy lunch up off the ground with a proper surface to eat from or to sit on while doing part time studies.

Children Recycling Plastics Program addresses the need for increased community awareness and knowledge of the dangers of failing to recycle through implementation of community outreach campaigns, as well as, through educational involvement in Nairobi’s schools.  The lack of community consciousness or concern, combined with current destructive disposal practices, has created an urban landscape strewn with harmful and unsanitary waste.  Even those communities with regular waste collection suffer as the litter from neighboring areas constantly spreads in all directions.  Garbage that is collected continues to harm citizens and the environment as it finds its way back into the communities.  The landfills where collected waste is dumped are already at capacity and spilling over.  The overflow is simply swept back into the public streets, or carried out into the drainage and waste systems, causing backups and becoming unsanitary breeding grounds for disease-carrying mosquitoes.

The leading cause of Nairobi’s landfills overflowing is the amount of plastic and other non-biodegradable waste built up as citizens have failed to recycle these materials properly.  The production and conventional disposal of plastic produces gases and hydrocarbons that are threatening the sustainability of our environment and rapidly contributing to the rate of global warming. There are very few ways to safely dispose of plastic waste. When burned it releases poisonous chemicals such as dioxin and is associated with skin and respiratory problems as a result of exposure to toxic fumes. Alternative attempts to dispose of plastic through landfills are also extremely dangerous as toxic seepage can result in the contamination of vital water sources. Moreover, the waste in landfills impedes the flow of ground water, which adversely affects the soil’s biological balance and organic processes.  This project provides Nairobi with an alternative method to disposing of these harmful materials while reducing the amount of plastics accumulating in landfills.

Finally, the major need being addressed by Fanya Mambo through this project is the need for employment and job training amongst Nairobi’s citizens.  The number of uneducated and unemployed in Nairobi is continually increasing, as is the amount of violence and crime amongst youths.  This project has already proven to be an effective source of job training and employment provider.  Educating communities on this green construction method will open doors and possibilities to those in need of jobs and training.  Eventually eco-brick construction can create an entirely new industry, providing jobs and inexpensive, less-harmful construction methods to all.

Ultimately, to ensure sustainability we all need to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, which is where Children Recycling Plastics Program comes in. Unsatisfactory waste disposal by both the public and private sectors in Nairobi coupled with 200,000 metric tonnes of solid waste dumped daily calls for an immediate solution and alternative. Children Recycling Plastics Program provides such a solution!

Children Recycling Plastics Program is an Eco-Friendly approach that Recycles and Reuses plastics without the adverse consequences of the conventional recycling techniques. The education system at the core of the Program simultaneously increases awareness and further encourages people to Reduce their use of plastics, while promoting sustainable habits and lifestyles.

Working with community members and school children, we have built a roundabout and a heavy-duty 20 seater table/bench in St Patrick Primary School, Built a heavy duty perimeter wall at Uhuru Primary School and small eatery using eco-blocks (used plastic bottles stuffed with used plastic bags). Three major clean-up exercises have also been so far successfully organized.

The program has the approval and endorsement of the National Environment Management Authority (N.E.M.A), the Education and Environment Departments of Nairobi City Council. We are always seeking out for well-wishers who wish to support this one of a kind initiative that has the potential of creating Job opportunities for the many unemployed youths and also helps in keeping the environment free of highly dangerous toxic wastes that are known to cause untreatable diseases. Organizations, Institutions and Companies that wish to partner with Fanya Mambo while implementing this program, are much welcome.

THE FANYA MAMBO CENTERS

The Fanya Mambo Centers are mainly for training in Performing Arts, Crafts, Integrated fish farming and appropriate technologies.

The Centers concept is based on a simple flexible working system that can be duplicated in other developing nations to benefit struggling small scale farmers and disadvantaged community members.  The Centers will be used as teaching tools where struggling small scale farmers will get hands-on training on sustainable, profitable, effective and environmental friendly farming techniques at no cost to them. Disadvantaged community members will also get hands-on basic survival jobs skills training to help curb the problem of unemployment amongst the youth.

Conventional farming and construction methods have devastated many areas around the world. Farmers fall into a cycle of reduced profit, degraded land, and poor market values. This cycle is hard to break, and puts a small scale farmer at great risk when the unexpected happens, like a severe drought. These small producers will continue to fall into poverty, unless they undergo a paradigm shift. The Center’s Agricultural Concept is that shift. Creating change is very difficult, but farmers have an innate understanding of the challenges they face in living with the land, and we feel that they will readily respond to examples that are sustainable and profitable that will be introduced to them at the proposed centers.

Each center will have specifically selected crops and livestock species that have feed inputs that align with waste outputs of each other, thereby reducing costs and increasing the diversity and resilience. Rain water harvesting, storage and calculated use are key to the system as this enables all year production despite short rainy seasons.

It’s time to ensure Food Security for one and all through this model of integration that increases yields while lowering costs. The Center’s Agricultural Concept focuses on diversity in livestock, is inherently simple, resilient, and profitable. It is a much needed example in the developing world and beyond.

Fanya Mambo’s long term plan is to create a minimum of ten centers of this kind scattered around the Horn of Africa. By having the centers in this region that is well known for deadly prolonged severe droughts over the years, food security among community members will be ensured and avoidable loss of lives due to food shortages will be averted.

Each of the centers will be annually producing at minimum, 32 skilled young people and farmers who would have otherwise been condemned to eternal poverty and hopelessness. The impact of this humble initiative will be felt wide and far as the trained persons will be returning back to their respective communities armed with proper knowledge on how to initiate their own profitable businesses in the various fields covered.

THE PILOT FANYA MAMBO CENTER

We are in the process of creating the first Fanya Mambo Center (a center for Performing Arts, Crafts, Integrated fish farming and appropriate technologies training). We recently acquired an 8 acre piece of property in Gem District of Siaya County, Nyanza Province, Kenya. This is where the proposed pilot center will be created. Fanya Mambo is currently fundraising for this project and is seeking for other like minded organizations to partner with while implementing this project.

A fiscal study has been done and major challenges faced by most community members around this area identified. This has enabled the tailoring of the center’s blue print aligned to various problems identified that fall on Fanya Mambo’s scope of expertise.

The area’s problems of over-dependence on rain and expensive inputs in farming, over-depending on Lake Victoria (the only lake around this area) for its fish, over-depending on the now elusive timber for construction and the major problems caused by lack of jobs and job skills training among the youths will all be addressed at the Proposed Center.

The Center will be hosting 16 disadvantaged community members from within this area; and then train them hands-on in specific survival skills depending on the available resources around their communities.  They will in turn, return back to their communities armed with basic survival skills/knowledge and ready to train their fellow community members on the same. Through Fanya Mambo’s network of skilled local and international volunteer/experts on various fields, the center will facilitate hands on appropriate training every six months to different groups, in the end of the six months period producing 16 skilled young men who would have otherwise languished in hopelessness and severe poverty.

Click on this link for a detailed Fanya Mambo Center information package.

REFORESTATION

At the Fanya Mambo Center, we grow native saplings for planting in the local area with the aim of ensuring that adequate forest cover is achieved. In Kenya, only 2% of our land is currently forest covered compared to 10% in the 60’s. This project aims to correct the situation by planting trees and encouraging community members to do the same too.

Between December and February we sprout tree seeds, fill planter bags with the soil mix, and transplant thousands of tree sprouts into their individual planter bags. In the following few months (the remainder of the dry season) we water, weed and fertilize the trees with our own organic fertilizer. By April which is the beginning of the rainy season, the trees are ready to be sold and/or planted. The newly planted trees then have the rest of the rainy season to establish roots before the next dry season sets in.

The tree saplings sell for 10 Shillings each, creating an affordable option for people wanting to reforest a plot of land, or help secure the soil around their crops. All the income generated by tree sales is used to purchase materials to produce the next crop of trees.

*The reforestation project is currently ongoing on a small scale level even as Fanya Mambo Foundation is still focusing its resources on the construction of the Pilot Fanya Mambo Center. The project will be up scaled once the construction work is completed.

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Fanya Mambo volunteers have the opportunity to develop and lead environmental education and English activities in local schools. Activities may take place in the schools, or at the Fanya Mambo Center, and include education on plastic pollution, the promotion of trash bottle collection, and the negative effects that soil erosion and deforestation have on health and crop production.

Volunteers working in the schools are encouraged to have regular meetings with the teachers and principal about expectations for the students’ education.