Maunga Community Transformation Project Report January 2025

We are grateful to BHW to partner with us in our endeavour to transform the lives of the people of Maunga, a community ruined and reproached. It is so easy in our day to stay unaware and uninvolved in other people's plights live the Levite and the Priest, but it takes the heart and spirit of the Good Samaritan and Nehemiah to identify with and engage. 

Our goal is towards a Biblical Transformation, Relational Unit and Practical Transformation. In our efforts to achieve this goal, we have put our tasks in three categories:
1) Things in our control that we can do without money or aid
2) Things we can do if we had money or aid
3) Things not in our control directly that require other people, the government, or God for them to work. 

We are encouraging our community to focus mainly on things in 1), making sure we are committed to doing them, like waking up early to pray, plan and work diligently with one's skills, refreshing your qualifications, working your garden, and even how you can be a benefit or blessing to your own community. By God's grace, this usually unlocks money for you to do 2), and once you are disciplined about how you use your money for those tasks, for some reason God, knowing you are acting in faith, activates 3) which opens up doors and opportunities. 

Achievements

With the help of BHW we have managed the following:

A) The installation of a solar borehole for the community: access to clean water has drastically reduced child mortality by eradicating waterborne diseases like malaria and diarrhoea. 

B) Chicken and soyabean projects: proceeds from the two projects were combined to start a thriving community goats project. 

C) Goats project: We are excited to announce that the number of goats has doubled from the initial 20. There were a few challenges of mortalities mainly from kids (an average of 3 in every 10) but we were assisted by a vet on minimising diseases. Our aim is for the project to grow to 300 goats and serve as a financial back up towards supporting the community's other fundamental projects like the building of the community's ECD block, good sanitation, a church hall etc. 

D) Solar power generator: we have acquired a power generator for the community. It is mobile and capable of charging cell phones, flood lights for open air functions, laptops and computers. 

E) Model garden fencing: we have installed a barbed wire fence around the model garden for the protection of the garden and the natural hedge nursery. We are hoping for the natural hedge to have grown in the next year or two. Shoots from the hedge will be used to hedge the rest of the community's gardens or households. 

F) Blair toilet roofing: we have managed to roof our Blair toilet which was vandalised during some political campaigns. 

Our 2025 Theme - "We Are Better Together" - Community Togetherness and Ownership

Our focus is to help the community take ownership of its own spiritual, economic, and social wellbeing, by learning to work well with others such that we can better leverage assets, make collective decisions, manage conflicts, and carry out long-term strategic plans to improve our community. 

We try to mobilise people into community work for the promotion of unity and oneness - show them that hard work is a way to honour God, that their skills and abilities are a gift from God and promote the value of people's minds, hearts, hands, and feet. We want to help them take ownership of their own transformation, train them to become self-sufficient under God, and raise people out of dependency. 

We managed to mobilise the community people to mould about 25,000 bricks for the community's ECD and church blocks. 

Plans for the Future

Standard Blair toilets: our aim is for each household to have a simple Blair toilet by the end of 2026. Community people will work together to dig toilet holes and make bricks. 

ECD classroom block: we aim to have completed the classroom block by October 2025

Church hall: we aim to have completed the church hall block by 2026

Second borehole: our earnest plea is for a second borehole. This would mainly cater for the model garden, the goats and other projects like chickens. 

Current Issues and Challenges

2024/25 Rain Season: Since November 2024 we have had erratic rain patterns mixed with a scorching sun. Most of all of our crops were written off. Most of the community people planted more than twice until January. Please pray with us for the rains to last until end of March lest another serious drought is looming. (In our region a normal rain fall seasons runs from November/December until the end of March.)

Spiritual: People are meeting mainly on Sundays for church services. Midweek programmes like prayer and Bible study are poorly attended because of people's involvement in the fields. 

Prayer and Praise Points

1) Pray for the rains to last until end of March
2) Pray for the unity of the community
3) Pray for the second borehole

Photos

1) and 2) Represents the average maize crop size. There are no other crops older than this crop in the whole community.
3) Goat project
4) The roofed toilet which is the model toilet intended for each household
5) The community's brick oven
6) The power generator for the community