Friday, August 28, 2009

Visiting Farmers in Kenya

Part of my job as Programmes Officer for World Vision Ireland is visiting the development projects to see how things are progressing.

The other day I made a long bumpy journey in the back of a pick up truck to a place called Mutonguni in Eastern Kenya – an area which has not received a drop of rain for almost a year.

Supporting Farmers

I met Lucy Ndemange and her husband Sammy. Lucy is a member of the Kauwi Farmer’s Group, one of twenty groups that received training in new farming methods from World Vision and the European Commission.

With Sammy’s help, she tested these methods on their land."We planted kale and tomatoes and we harvest once a week, which earns us 3,000 bob (€28) per week. We are using the money to pay for our daughter’s secondary school fees and we have plans to expand this technology across our farm. Our neighbours have even started copying these methods" explained Sammy.

Water
Lucy and her neighbours have access to a well, which they can water the crops from, but it’s not easy work: She let me have a go at pulling the 20 litre bucket up the 18m well shaft and laughed when I broke into a sweat before it was half way up. Not easy, I can tell you.
By Eileen in Nairobi

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

World Vision CEO on Newstalk

I really enjoyed an interview with World Vision Ireland Chief Executive, Helen Keogh, on Sunday with Norris on Newtalk last weekend.

Claire Byrne was standing in as the presenter and they got to talking about Helen's life spanning feminism, politics and how she came to work for the overseas development agency World Vision Ireland.

Women in Power

Helen successfully ran in the 1992' breakthrough election' which saw 9 new women TDs get elected and brought the total number of female TDs to 20. It was really interesting to hear her talk about how they were all brought onto the Late Late Show and asked who was going to mind their kids while they were at work... It's well worth a listen.

You can listen to the interview online at http://www.worldvision.ie/server.php?show=nav.1365

It takes a minute to download as the files is quite large. You can also get the podcast on the Newstalk website http://newstalk.ie/newstalk/programmes/16/sunday-with-norris.html

By Tressan in Dublin