A team of 17 people from Barnsley is travelling to Kenya next month to lay water pipes to homes in a poor village.
Rev Benson Kimaru, of St George’s Church in town, is leading the trip to Gacharu, the village where he was born, about 60 miles from Nairobi.
He says it is a poor community which loses out on money from the Kenyan government for water, because all funding goes to nearby villages where it never rains and there is always drought.
“In Gacharu, the weather is unpredictable. There is sometimes drought, sometimes rain. But the water pipes go straight through the village, with no water for the houses.
“The women in Gacharu have to walk three miles to the river to get water. For many houses, much more than three miles.”Mr Benson’s party hope to dig trenches and lay pipes to three more houses when they go on February 17 and they have also raised hundreds towards the project.
The volunteers are paying their own transport costs of almost £500.One of the volunteers is Monika Godlewska. She said: “There are still many thousands more who haven’t got access to good clean water. We are going to help get the water and equipment to people in their homes.”
