PIPELINE

A student led project producing educational resources about Kenya for high schools

INTRODUCTION
Pipeline is a student-led project that follows a water pipe leading
from the foothills of Mt Kilimanjaro all the way through southern Kenya to flower farms in Nairobi which supply one third of the red roses sold in the UK. The project will culminate in editions of an educational book aimed at high schools in the UK and Kenya with an archive of digital resources that can be used for a variety of curriculum subjects. It will tell stories about the social and physical changes happening in Kenya as the country goes through industrialisation using film, photography, fictional and non-fictional writing.

WHAT WE WILL DO
The book will inspire students to learn about their relationships with people around the world. It
will be aimed at 11-16 year olds in the UK and Kenya, and will focus on the social and physical changes the country is experiencing. To help teachers and students to unpack the stories in the book, we will also be producing a range of teaching resources. This will include interactive digital resources, full video and audio interviews with people from the communities along the pipeline and Kenyan experts, photo silde shows, factsheets and additional online resources.

OUR MOTIVATION
The idea for this book was inspired by the trip we made to
rural areas of Kenya to produce Letters to Africa. During this trip we were struck by the responsibility tribespeople have towards their environment. They live with the things they need to sustain themselves; their baby goats live in their house, their cows live in their yard and the crops and water they need are in the next field. And if any of these things suffer so do they. Their relationship with the things they consume is very different to the one we have in the industrialised world. Here, we buy something from a shop and know nothing of where it is from or how it got there. This book is an attempt to follow the journey of the red rose all the way back, through the water that is used to feed it, looking at the impact this has on the communities along the route.

BACKGROUND
Led by the School of Journalism, Media & Communication and working with the University of Nairobi and the Maasai Centre for Field Studies the student led project is being delivered by the team that published the award-winning book Letters to Africa.

WHAT ITS ABOUT

The book follows the route of the pipeline from Mt Kilimanjaro all the way through to the flower farms
in Nairobi and back to the UK. Along this route the story looks at a number of themes, which forms the chapters of the book. These themes are: water, farming, homes, health, education, wildlife and culture. Each chapter of the book tells stories of how they are changing as a result of industrialisation.

Culture
Kenyan culture has changed through industrialisation and through this section we look at the traditional and urban cultures, and the many fascinating and inspiring stories of how Kenyans live their lives all along the pipeline.

Homes

Homes and settlements along the pipeline have changed from tribal villages to trading towns to massive urban centres. This section includes stories of what it is like to live in these places and what motivates people to move to urban areas.

Health
The health problems Kenyan people face are changing with many terrible water-borne diseases such as malaria becoming commonplace. There are other diseases also affecting these communities as an indirect result of industrialisation and this chapter has stories of how people here are dealing with them.

Education

What children are taught in rural areas of Kenya is changing to prepare them for the new types of jobs that come with industrialisation. The traditional education relies on knowledge passed on from one generation to the next, specific to that community. This section has stories about these different types of education, and what they mean to these communities.

Wildlife Farming
Farming along this route has changed dramatically over recent years, from small pastoral farms to large crop farms to huge industrial farms, of which there are examples as you travel along the pipeline. This section covers stories about the pressures on farmers to make these changes at a local, national and international level. Wildlife is very important to the Kenyan economy as it attracts tourists. But the problem of access to water has led to conflict between humans and wildlife over this scarce resource. This section looks at these conflicts and how the local communities are trying to deal with them.

Water
Access to clean water is a major problem for Kenyans, and the water pipe has meant that many people along its route now struggle to get access. It has also led to many animals struggling for water and has affected the ecosystems in this area of Kenya.

WHAT IT WILL BE LIKE

communities along the pipeline, beautiful photographs, fascinating facts about life in Kenya and interviews with leading Kenyan experts about the topics covered. There will also be a DVD with a documentary film following the journey along the pipeline. All this will be produced to the highest consumer standards and will be designed to inspire the young people who read it.

...AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE

Kenya and high schools in Lancashire to produce a live TV panel show broadcast simultaneously from both countries. Using tools provided by Promethean schools from every continent on the planet will be able to watch and interact with the show. The project will also involve a range of innovative additional resources, such as an e-book, online materials, teaching resources, on-going collaborations between pupils in Kenya and England and some amazing links that will enable pupils to research these subjects themselves. Finally, we will make a donation from the profits made by the book to two charities in Kenya that provide access to education for children, one in a rural area and one in an urban area.

It will be filled with amazing stories, incredible personal accounts by people living in the

In 2012 we will be working with high schools in Oloitokitok near the source of the pipeline in

WHO IS INVOLVED
Students from University of Central Lancashire have
been working on the project and will be working with students from University of Nairobi, schools in Kenya and Lancashire and Promethean, who make educational hardware and software that is used by over 500,000 schools around the world,. The project has also benefited from the support of a number of community based educational projects in Kenya such as Maasai Centre for Field Studies and Mathare Roots Project. The UK edition of the book features contributions by pupils from schools around the UK through a story-writing competition set especially by the acclaimed African writer Ifeoma Onyefulu (author of A is for Africa). It also features work by writers from the leading independent Kenyan literary project Kwani.

For more information please contact Steven Speed sspeed@uclan.ac.uk 01772 895994

Photographs by: Adam Beazley, Alina Livia Lazar, Antoni Georgiev, Gemma Nolan, Paula Murray, Teresa Roberts

PIPELINE

For more information please contact Steven Speed sspeed@uclan.ac.uk 01772 895994