Boulder’s Kenya project awarded grant

Boulder is one of seven cities in the United States, along with their African Sister City counterparts, awarded grants to be used for addressing sanitation, health and water issues in African urban areas.

The grant from the African Urban Poverty Alleviation Program is a three-year project funded by a $7.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It will benefit Kisumu, Kenya, Boulder’s newest Sister City, and is expected to provide up to $115,000 to apply to projects, in addition to travel funds.

In a press release announcing the grants, Sister Cities International called the program “a major effort to address fundamental needs of citizens of urban areas in Africa.”

Darryl Brown, a member of the Boulder Rotary Club who is director of cardiac, respiratory, neurodiagnostics at Boulder Community Hospital, helped start the Sister City project with Kisumu.

He first learned about Kisumu through a Rotary project to provide safe drinking water to a school in nearby Rabour. When he and his daughter visited Rabour, they found that the town's many orphans couldn't attend school because of their daily need to scavenge for food. A Boulder Rotary fundraiser in 2007 netted $14,000, which Brown delivered personally to Kisumu Rotarians before he was forced to flee the country because of escalating political violence. Since that time the project has purchased 500 chicks, now mature and laying eggs; nine goats, six now pregnant; and a local porridge flour-producing company – all combining to feed the orphans and keep them in school.

Kisumu, Kenya's third-largest city with a population of 300,000, lies 13 miles south of the equator.

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