Pod Advisor Profile: Joshua Machinga
We finalize the series of articles introducing our Pod Advisors with the profile of Joshua Machinga from Common Ground for Africa, Kenya.
Joshua Machinga earned his degree in agronomy at Manor House Agricultural College in Kitale. After a stint at the World Bank, he founded Common Ground for Africa with the intention of teaching women in his region of Western Kenya organic farming, This led to an internship at Ecology Action in California where he learned the principles and practice of BioIntensive farming from the renowned John Jeavons. Returning to Kenya, community leaders persuaded Joshua to start a K-8 Primary Boarding school called Pathfinder Academy. Training in agriculture was woven into the curriculum, and the school catered to children who were orphaned and impoverished by the AIDS epidemic. Pathfinder academy became a top school in Kenya based on student success on national exams. Continuing to do agricultural training for women’s groups, Joshua looked for ways to help the women increase their incomes. This led to the founding of Wasoni, a women’s market cooperative. Two Pangea members, Sidney Munger and JoAnn Schindler, traveled to Kenya to conduct the initial leadership and planning workshop to launch Wasoni. Through the cooperative, women were able to aggregate and grade their excess corn and beans, which they were able to sell in quantity to large institutions. The women increased their income by as much as 50%.
Noticing that girls were not getting the same scholarship opportunities to attend secondary school given to boys, Joshua figured it would be less expensive to start his own girl’s secondary school than it was to raise funds to underwrite scholarships for girls at other schools. He launched the Lenana Girls High School and it too has become a top school with a notable curriculum in entrepreneurship for young women. As part of the school, Joshua built a Training Center where the girls learned to clean, grade, and package the Wasoni cooperative food and prepare it for sale.
Joshua has always been eager to partner with both local government and other non-profits to help his community. In one notable partnership, he was asked by the University of Alberta Graduate School of Engineering to manufacture and distribute low-cost ceramic water filters they had designed. This led to the building of a factory to manufacture the filters at the Common Ground campus. Though the clay was sourced locally, Joshua had to travel to China to source the special silver compound and plastic buckets needed to complete the process. The filters are distributed throughout Kenya by several international non-profits.
More recently Joshua has been leading the community participation aspect of a large government-funded reforestation of the Mount Elgon watershed. Joshua is a true evangelist of agroecology. In his ‘spare’ time, he travels periodically to Turkana, a very arid area in Northwest Kenya to teach rural women how to conserve water and grow vegetables in a harsh environment.
Through the years Pangea has been proud to support the Pathfinder school with scholarships, a new kitchen, suitable beds for the children, and a well water system. Pangea also supported the development of the Wasoni Cooperative from its inception through several trials and error iterations, as well as providing working capital to extend credit to the farmers. For his part, Joshua has been a very generous supporter of other Pangea partners by sharing advice and resources.