Simon Maddrell was unable to get a job in the aid sector — so he just went ahead and set up his own charity.

Now he supports Kenyan farmers by building sand dams, a low cost, low tech solution to the world's water crisis, which Simon describes as ‘quite simply, a miracle’.

The dams are actually low concrete walls built across small rivers that stop flowing during the dry season. Sand collects behind the wall and, like a sponge, retains water which the locals can then siphon off. With access to year-round clean water, farmers can grow enough food not just to eat but also to sell, allowing them to pay school fees and buy other necessities.

Maddrell was in the middle of his A-level exams when he decided he wanted to help improve water supplies in Africa. He took a year out and in 1984 met Kenyan agriculturalist Joshua Mukusya. As a child it had been Joshua’s job to fetch water for the family, a round trip of 8 km and double that during droughts. Joshua didn’t want his own children making such a journey and he believed that sand dams could guarantee safe water as well as reducing the huge amount of time Kenyan women spent hauling water.

Joshua and Simon organised a youth expedition to Africa, raising funds to build dams and water tanks. It was, Simon says, ‘the start of a beautiful friendship’ with the area and its people.

Giving up his place in medical school, Maddrell studied development and in 1988 returned to Kenya to help build a medical centre and more water tanks. After an unsuccessful search for a job in the charity sector he was advised to go into industry, so he started on what was to become a successful corporate career.  ‘It was fantastic experience and a great career, but I always knew in my heart of hearts that it was not what I wanted to do forever,’ Simon says. ‘When I got the chance to take voluntary redundancy I grabbed it and ran.’

Although he had worked with the local Kenyan community for nearly 20 years, and despite applying for over 100 positions, Simon was still unable to get a job in development. Determined to fund Joshua’s new tree-planting project, he realised the solution was right under his nose. He had all the management skills and experience needed to run his own charity.

The one he set up, Excellent Development, grew quickly, although at first he had to balance charity work with consultancy roles to earn money. Now, the award-winning charity continues to raise funds as well as partnering expeditions to give students the chance to work on the projects.

Here's Simon talking about the effects of one of the dams:

‘I was standing in one of the thousands of seasonal riverbeds in Kenya. It hadn’t rained for nine months and you could tell. Upstream all I could see was a dry rocky riverbed, some scattered acacia trees on the banks and nothing else. But downstream was different. Forty yards away there was a bunch of children around a hole in the sand. As I approached I could see there was water four feet below the surface – clean water being scooped up into 20 litre jerry cans with joyful fervour.

'I walked for a kilometre downstream. Every 100 metres or so there was another hole – protected by thorn bushes and surrounded by men, women and children, collecting water from three feet, two feet, then one foot below the surface. Bicycles, donkeys and strong backs were used to take the water away. I was walking on water and it hadn’t rained for nine months. I was walking on the sand that had collected behind a sand dam and it was scarcely believable. However, it was nothing compared to what I was about to see – a picture that I will remember until my dying day.

'I was starting to get close to the dam now, trudging in the hot sand. Ahead of me kids were playing football on the now harder and damper sand close to the edge of the dam and beyond them it was green. Green and wet. A river was flowing from nowhere, forty or fifty goats were eating the grass that was growing and drinking the water that was flowing. I looked over the concrete wall of the sand dam and saw water pouring out of the pipe through the dam. It was at that point that I concluded something that I’d suspected for 25 years – sand dams are a miracle.’

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