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Members of SI Cannock & District recently watched a moving recording of a choir in a village in Kenya – the villagers were singing to say ‘thank you’ to the club members for providing their village with a grinding machine.
Soroptimist Ann Rotchell and her husband Allan founded the charity Action Kenya following a holiday they spent in the country. In 1999 they provided a mill for one of the villages, in 2000 a second mill was provided after Ann and Allan had raised funds here in the UK. The mills were run by diesel until the end of last year when the Kenyan Government put an electricity supply into the clinic, the school and the mill. This meant that machines that work from electricity were needed. The women and girls in the village also asked for a machine to take the shells off the corn. The cost of such a grinding mill was £850 – and this amount was raised by Soroptimists in Cannock.
The machine was purchased and installed over the winter and Ann and Allan visited earlier this year to see how it was working. Ann reported to club members that the difference it has made to the lives of the villagers is out of this world! The time taken to grind the corn has been cut dramatically; the machine works from 6.00am to 11.00pm and grinds 2,000 kilos of corn each day. As well as saving time it has halved the cost of the operation.
4000 families will benefit from this one grinding mill: the shells are used as food for the chickens; 100 women will be able to use the time they previously spent grinding corn to grow vegetables and crops which they can then sell at market; the children are no longer needed for the shelling and so can go to school, with all the benefits that will bring.
Soroptimists were thrilled to see the difference that had been made by putting one grinding mill into one village – and were touched to see and hear the sung thanks of those villagers.
THE GRINDING MACHINE
