Water tank gets a 'donkey' facelift!
Posted on 24 March 2011.A water storage tank at Daaba near Isiolo in Kenya has been decorated with pictures of donkeys and welfare messages after children at a local school entered a competition to create the designs, to help encourage a sense of community ownership as well as promoting good donkey care. The winning designs themselves were painted by a professional artist.
Both teachers and pupils say the messages have contributed towards achieving positive change in the way people in the community treat their donkeys.
One of the teachers said "Whenever people come to draw water or give their animals water to drink, they usually read the messages and notice the pictures. This reminds them that the animals help them in life and should be treated well".
The tank was renovated for the local community by The Donkey Sanctuary’s Donkey Health and Welfare Project, run by the Kenya Society for the Protection and Care of Animals (KSPCA) after it had been damaged and fell into disuse. It is now connected to a pumping system which feeds fresh water through to a trough where donkeys and other animals drink.
The project came about after a local women’s group asked for help in getting water for their donkeys. At the time they had to draw it from deep open wells, which was hard work, and the wells were also being used by many other people and animals.
The KSPCA are The Donkey Sanctuary's partners in Kenya. We have a clinic and harness workshop at their base in Karen near Nairobi, and three mobile teams who carry out clinical and community education work in clusters of donkey-owning communities, some close to Nairobi, some up to 400 km away.
