Our week as Friends of Londiani

One early Sunday morning in Nairobi, Kenya, a group of young women met at the Kenyan Girl Guides’ main office. This group of women were going for a week-long visit to the district of Londiani in North-west-Kenya where the Irish NGO Friends of Londiani work with the local communities on improving the daily life of the inhabitants.


It sounds like a standard week with a standard NGO in Africa – but it was so much more than that, and far from being standard.

Diverse group of JLS-scholars

Sixteen JLS participants were given the opportunity to spend a week experiencing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in action before the JLS started to gain expert knowledge and inspiration.

The group of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts was very diverse with participants from Pakistan and the Maldives in the East, Canada in the West, Denmark to the North and Swaziland and New Zealand to the South. The young women took the challenge and left in those three vehicles that Sunday morning to travel to Londiani.

Ownership, participation and teamwork

The Kipkelion District that includes the village of Londiani is approximately five hours north west of Nairobi and is in a traditionally poor area where access to clean water is a daily challenge along with fighting malaria and other health issues.

Friends of Londiani (FOL) is an Irish registered NGO working with the community on a variety of projects that the community alongside FOL has decided on. The projects are all directly linked to the MDGs and are focused on serving the basic needs of life, water, health and education. It is very important for FOL that all projects are initiated by the community and that the community contributes with the workforce and commitment to the projects. This approach has increased the success rate of the projects conducted and the level of ownership in the community, and consequently the respect for FOL very high.

This was evident from the first moment we saw Londiani, where we were met with singing and dancing and many smiles. We all felt instantaneously at home, and even though we slept eight in a room, the food was different than what we were used to, and the mosquitoes would attack at night, everything seemed right.

Within 24 hours we all felt the sisterhood of guiding and scouting and could just as well have known each other for years. The Kenyan spirit is truly contagious and you could not help but smile when you met a Kenyan with outstretched hands expressing his or her delight that we were there.

Projects with meaning

Our tasks varied greatly according to both our interests and the jobs that needed doing. Some made health surveys in local homes screening the year’s illness in the family, use of mosquito nets and general health of the household. This knowledge is very valuable to the local clinics and for the projects to be focused on the coming year. Other participants helped maintain the local childrens’ home housing more than 70 children or do summer camp activities for the local children. They have many tasks and challenges in their daily life and the summer camp served as a well-deserved break.

During the week, the local communities met up and discussed what projects to focus on the coming year, so that FOL can start planning the next year’s activities. Especially the installation of rain water tanks on tin-roofed houses are in high demand. In the rainy season one tank can provide up to ten families with clean drinking water.

In every project we participated in we felt the difference it would make in the local Kenyans’ lives, how they felt ownership in every activity that was done, and how much of a difference FOL has made in the district.

Our week as Friends of Londiani ended with a public Health Field day, were locals could come and receive advice and various information on health issues such as malaria, HIV and AIDS and malnutrition.