Pictured above, our Namelok ladies group celebrate the opening of a clean water well along with the community around St. Norbert’s Primary School. This well will serve to provide clean drinking water to primary school students and the surrounding community. Because of the capacity of the well along with the rehabilitation of a massive water tank on site, this well will be a source for irrigation, providing the school the ability to grow crops to feed the children at school.
While the public schools receive some government funding to provide food to these children, it typically lasts for about a fourth of the year. When food supplies run out, the school staff must resort to sending the children home for lunch. Most of children opt to stay at school, knowing the trip home will be fruitless, they choose to stay at school and conserve their energy.
We will be updating you as the irrigation construction and farming begins. In the meantime, providing water to these children during the day as well as allowing them to carry water home is just another incentive for them to come to school!
One of the exciting aspects of this project was discovering that the massive water storage tank built in the 1940s during the colonial farming era where sisal plantations once flourished, was actually viable with some rehabilitation. The rehabilitation cost as much as it would have originally cost to purchase a water storage tank, one that would have been plastic, so it would have lasted about five years with a capacity of about a tenth of what this concrete storage container can! It’s also incredibly exciting for us when we get to see the use and rehab of local resources that were once colonial-era now be used to serve children and local communities, and it looks much more attractive!
Another aspect of this story is the redemption of a well-intended project gone bad. About five years ago another organization drilled a well on the primary school site. It provided clean water for a couple years to the school and community. Unfortunately it was not drilled properly, so it began to collapse and ceased to provide any water. This was not only an unfortunate waste of resources but it was became a serious danger to the students because they could easily fall into the well.
The drilling and construction of this well included the filling in and securing the safety of this hazard. Foothold also made sure that the construction of the well was done according to guidelines to insure that it would be safe and secure for the workers drilling it and have structural integrity to last for generations.
One of the reasons Foothold chose this particular school is because of our long-standing relationship. We have been working with this school for over seven years working with them on sexual abuse prevention, reproductive health, providing soap and hygiene education. We’ve been impressed over the years how this school has strived to reach the Maasai community as this particular community has the historically had the lowest rates of school attendance. We have observed each initiative has increased overall enrollment, attendance, and test scores especially among the Maasai. Every one of these interventions makes sending their children to school more appealing to them. These trends quickly become contagious as the school earns the trust of respected families among the Maasai people.
Prior to this, the dry seasons were very difficult for families, especially women and children, who often travel up to 8 miles per day to fetch water. Instead these women and children are coming to their local public school, opening opportunities for families to become familiar with the staff, to see children enjoying their education, etc. This just creates more positive interactions among the community and the school.
This project was funded through a special peer-to-peer fundraising campaign called Kilimanjaro4Water. Cherie Catron climbed Kilimanjaro in the fall of 2021 along with Chelsey Bolles and Kalyn McGraw. All three of these women paid for their travel and climb expenses and used the climb as an opportunity to create awareness and raise funds. Along with these three women, over 25 people and businesses sponsored them through peer fundraising campaigns.
Cherie Catron will be climbing Kilimanjaro in September of 2022 along with her husband Brad Catron and their son, David Masters. If you are interested in climbing with them and/or hosting a peer campaign to help Foothold provide more clean water, contact Cherie at [email protected]. You can also follow her story on social media under the hastag #kilimanjaro4water.
I will be climbing Kilimanjaro September 18, 2021 along with Chelsey Bolles and Kalyn McGraw. The three of us have paid for our travel and climb expenses, but we’re seeking donations through our climb to fund the drilling of two wells in Kenya where Foothold International works.
We hope to raise awareness about the global water crisis and encourage people in the US and around the world to become engaged in sustainable solutions to the water crisis.
I always said when I climb Kilimanjaro, I would tell no one because no matter how much a person trains, no one knows for sure until summit day how your body will handle 19,341 feet! And I could not handle that much pressure.
So, why am I am announcing it to you? In spite of my fear of failure and the added pressure of disclosure, I am climbing the mountain to raise money for clean water.
Foothold International has identified two areas in desperate need of safe, reliable, clean drinking water.
We know clean water saves lives. We have witnessed first-hand the tragic outcomes that water-borne diseases have on babies, the elderly and those who are HIV positive. In addition, many young women are forced to drop out of school and endure dangerous conditions to fetch water for their families, water that is all too often contaminated.
There are so many water-related stories we can tell and plan to share leading up to our climb, we hope you will follow our journey on Facebook and Instagram because we need you to help us. You can join us on this climb, encourage us, donate to our fundraiser, start your own fundraising team. There are many ways for you to get involved without ever stepping onto an airplane.
I (Cherie) will be leaving for Kenya, August 6 and spending that time prior to the climb doing the work of Foothold, meeting with our staff, developing our strategy for the next year, visiting and evaluating the work on the ground.
In mid-September, Chelsey & Kalyn will meet me in Nairobi and we will start our journey shortly after.
I have created a Facebook group where you can follow my progress leading up to the trip, and I hope to post updates during the climb on Instagram. You can follow our journey in both places.
If you visit my Facebook group, you will find lots of content designed to be shared on social media and to encourage you to encourage us! I will be updated that Facebook page with trivia, facts about the climb, tips for prepping for a climb, etc.
I am incredibly excited and nervous about this trip. It is coming up very soon, and I couldn’t be more humbled by all of your help.
In response to current circumstances this year, we are changing our banquet to an online format. We look forward to gathering together in person in the future.
We still need your help as hosts to encourage your friends and family to tune in. We will be updating this blog as the date gets closer.
Form can be emailed to you (link will be available here for an online version)
Foothold Market is an online store that supports the mission of Foothold International through the sale of handcrafted soap and accessories made in Kenya, Nebraska and Ohio. What originally began as the Namelok Soap Co. to support our soap making groups in Kenya has now grown into an international venture bringing artisans from Kenya and the United States together.
We decided in 2020 to change the name from Namelok Soap Co to better connect with our mission and to broaden the title as we were adding more than soap to our products to our sales.
Although our partnership with Pacha Soap Co began in 2016, we took our relationship another step in December of 2019, when we began working with them as a vendor, selling their handcrafted soap.
This venture supports the work of Foothold twofold. Every bar of Pacha Soap supports clean water initiatives, hygiene education and small business opportunities worldwide through Foothold, Imagine Burundi, Water4, and other like-minded organizations.
When you buy a bar of Pacha Soap directly from Foothold through our website or at a Foothold table at a live event, proceeds directly support our work in Kenya as well as Pacha Soap Co’s other partners.
Purchasing Pacha Soap through Foothold further helps us devote more time to the mission of Foothold instead of making soap. We still plan to make soap in limited supplies. Check the Foothold Market site for available products.
If you are in our hometown of Chillicothe, Ohio, we also encourage you to visit another Foothold Market partner, a retail of gifts an apparel called Kindly, located in the Fort Collective Building on the corner of Mulberry & 2nd St.
Owner, Deidre Rowland has an incredible testimony of her own and a beautiful variety of items that have a story, a message or a mission. Not only she has offered us generous shelf space where you can purchase Pacha Soap, but she has also worked with us to craft high-quality candles and other self-care products.
In February of 2020, we provided our ladies groups in Kenya with new sewing machines and training to help them diversify their current business of making washable menstrual pads which they both sell and donate to more tailored items. They learned to make bags, aprons, headbands. During that month Cherie also worked with the Maasai women who are already famous for jewelry-making to develop lines of jewelry that would be marketable back in the US.
During the months of April and March, Foothold family members and supporters began sewing masks which they donated to Foothold as another way to provide for our local community and raise money for Foothold. We are so grateful for these generous and talented makers and look forward to adding more handmade items to our Market.
UPDATE! Julie’s Shop on Paint St. in Chillicothe, Ohio has resumed carrying our handmade soaps & candles too. Check out her Facebook page
Contact Cherie at [email protected] if you are interested becoming a partner in the Foothold Market.
Foothold faced a new challenge threatening our ongoing projects in rural Kenya. In late March, Kenyan schools shut down in response to Covid-19. Our three groups in Kenya making soap for their public schools with support from Pacha Soap Co. contacted us right away to ask how they should respond.
Honestly, our focus was on the immediate food crisis on the ground, so we told them to pause for a few days for us to contact Pacha Soap Co. and formulate a thoughtful response as we gathered information on the ground.
Within a few days, we received word that local school leaders reached out to all three groups to request we assist them in providing soap.
Teachers, administrators and community leaders stepped up to help deliver soap, concerned their students were at home and more than ever needed soap to help prevent the spread of Covid-19
As part of our soap partnership, the community agreed to protect the school soap. Our groups make the school soap a distinct purple color that if seen in someone’s home gets reported to local officials to address. However, under the circumstances because we were so encouraged by their desire to help and volunteer their time, it was an easy decision to make an exception and pivot our outreach to their homes.
Each of our groups jumped into action, working with school and community leaders to deliver the soap in the homes and at water sources. Foothold took this as an opportunity to provide washable menstrual pads, handmade masks, and food staples that were desperately needed.
An added benefit to this community response was that soap was provided to young Maasai boys who have not been allowed to attend school. One of those boys, Saidimu Lekimani, is pictured. He attended our adult education program we launched in January of this year because he has to tend cattle for his family during the day, but he wanted to learn to read and write.
Because of our work with the Maasai community in the area, Maasai men were also eager to receive the handmade masks and to learn about hand washing hygiene. Reaching these largely illiterate Maasai men to help sensitize and educate them is one of Foothold’s most challenging goals.
Jennifer Moses, one of our young leaders of the women’s group in Njoro took the initiative to meet children at the local spring, instructing them on hand washing hygiene.
We are incredibly grateful for our ongoing partnership with Pacha Soap Co. that has just proven more critical during this time.
