About Us

Introduction - Our Vision

H20toto has a vision of a community, country and continent where everyone has access to a good education, safe water, good sanitation and health, and ultimately a much better life.

To reverse the poverty and environmental damage caused by widespread neglect over many years, our initial aim is to start a project called Kenyan School, and Community Educational and Water Resource Project.

To do this we intend to raise funds and assist in carrying out practical work in village primary schools in Kenya. This will help develop the children’s education generally and increase awareness of the importance of all natural resources and especially of water, to them and their community.

The intention is to improve the ability of the whole community to cope with the inevitable shortages in the future (from drought etc), and we feel by helping children and the school initially, we can at least have a small impact on their lives, and of course on future generations.

Criteria

We believe that certain common criteria will be in evidence for the success of any project. These criteria include but are by no means limited to the following:

• Ensure Continuity: Sound education of children and ultimately training of local adults is essential for success of all projects, to ensure.
• Ensure Local Ownership and Self Sufficiency: Local people must be involved in planning, constructing, managing and maintaining their own projects, to become self sufficient.
• Clean water, sanitation and energy resources are essential for survival, and everyone should have affordable access to them.
• Ensure Integration of Education: Water, sanitation and hygiene education must be integrated to give maximum health benefits.
• Focus on poorest: Focus should be on the poorest and most vulnerable but we should strive to help everyone to learn how to get themselves out the poverty trap.
• Use Appropriate Technology: The technologies used must be appropriate, basic where necessary, easy to maintain, and cost effective.
• Ensure Long-Term Development: Focusing on long term development is crucial. Short term solutions do more harm than good by raising too many expectations. Throwing money at a project does not necessarily guarantee success. It is invariably necessary to get support from local and national authorities for funded work.
• Take Account of Local conditions: Unfortunately bureaucracy and politics at all levels often hinder projects for charities and prove the biggest hurdle to success. We will never underestimate the importance of taking this into account.

Who We Are

H20toto was formed in December 2003 by two individuals living in Kent, England.

Tony Benson

Tony Benson was born in Kenya in 1952 and married a Kenyan in 1984. His father Jack Benson was a well known Agriculturalist pioneer of coffee in the Nyeri and Meru districts of Kenya in the 1940s and 1950s. He helped to develop the local communities. Tony lived in Kenya until the age of nine. He has worked both overseas and within the UK for mainly Civil Engineering Contractors, and cares passionately about water conservation, development of sustainable energy, and alternative technologies, especially in Africa, where there is a desperate need. Several visits back to Kenya in the 1980s and 1990s convinced him of the hardship caused by the need for primary school children to collect water daily from the river, some miles away. This water was just for basic needs. He started private funding of guttering for school roofs and the repair and construction of water storage tanks to take run-off. This has been fairly successful but needs maintaining expanding, training and education.

Olga Kalsi

Olga Kalsi was born in the UK in 1949 and is also married to a Kenyan. She was a secondary school teacher in the UK for many years and visited primary schools in Kenya where she was struck by the sheer lack of basic school stationery, equipment and books in the classroom. Olga has already sponsored children on an individual basis helping to pay for their entire schooling. It is not expensive, and very rewarding. She sees this as a small part of a much larger picture and wishes to get more people to sponsor children.

Kavita Kalsi

Kavita Kalsi was born in the UK in 1983. Having taught in schools overseas in both the developed and developing world, she is well aware of the difference that simply access to educational resources can have on a child's prtential to succeed academically. She is involved in raising awareness in the UK of the needs of the children of Gategi school (and others in the locality) and in generating funds to be used to improve conditions in the schools.