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KENYA / HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT
STORY: KENYA / HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT
TRT: 2.40
SOURCE:
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / SWAHILI / KIKUYU / NATS
DATELINE: RECENT, KEINI, KENYA
1. Wide shot, Mount Kenya
2. Wide shot, trees in forest
3. Wide shot, field
4. Med shot, irrigation of field
5. Wide shot, people walking on a path
6. Various shots, students in school
7. SOUNDBITE (Kikuyu) Gerald Kingori:
“Life was harder then, there was no money, things are better, people are building wooden houses these days unlike the grass ones we had before”
8. Med shot, Anna Wanjiku, Gerald’s wife peeling potatoes
9. SOUNDBITE (Kikuyu) Anna Wanjiku:
“These day are better because there is progress”
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Jenny Klugman, Director of the Human Development Report:
11. Various shots, Paul Muriithi Kingori feeding cows
12. SOUNDBITE (Swahili) Paul Muriithi Kingori:
“Biogas has helped me achieve my aim as a farmer. Things have improved, the money that I used to make form crops such as potatoes, would be used to buy fertilizers. These days I don’t spend anything on fertilizer. It’s improved life a great deal”
13. Various shots, Kingori working in farm
14. Various shots, Ruth Wanjiru Muriithi changing babies nappy
15. SOUNDBITE (Swahili) Ruth Wanjiru Muriithi Paul’s wife:
“When I was a child we pretty much went to see traditional doctors, we were given remedies that were not very effective; but now, we have access to health care facilities and our children are treated for specific ailments and that has helped boost their health”
16. Med shot, woman receiving medicine from nurse at a clinic
17. SOUNDBITE (Swahili) Paul Muriithi Kingori:
“I want them to get to university, even when we talk they tell me how they want to be engineers, doctors the vision i have to see them complete their studies will happen”
18. Various shots, Paul with children looking at old photos
Most developing countries made dramatic yet often underestimated progress in health, education and basic living standards in recent decades, with many of the poorest countries posting the greatest gains, according to the Human Development Report 2010 to be released Thursday (4 November) at headquarters in New York.
The 2010 Report: “The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development” will be launched by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UNDP Administrator Helen Clark and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who helped devise the Human Development Index (HDI) for the first Human Development Report in 1990 with the late economist Mahbub ul Haq, the series founder.
The Human Development Reports and the HDI challenged purely economic measures of national achievement and helped lay the conceptual foundation for the United Nations’s (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), calling for consistent global tracking of progress in health, education and overall living standards.
In Kenya, rural communities remain poor compared to world standards, but life is better for most small farmers now, than it was 40 years ago. New irrigation systems have improved crop yields, better roads and communications have opened wider market possibilities, and new schools offer opportunities to children in these rural communities that their parents never had.
The Muriithi family, who own a small farm in the Keini district near Mount Kenya, have benefited itself as a beneficiary of these changes. The father, 42-year-old Paul Muriithi Kingori supports the family with his crop earnings.
His parents grandparents, Gerald and Anna Kingori say that life is better for there grand children, “life was harder then, there was no money, things are better, people are building wooden houses these days unlike the grass ones we had before,” Kingori said recalling his youth.
Paul Muriithi Kingori introduced a small biogas facility to the farm and this he says has greatly improved there lives.
“Biogas has helped me achieve my aim as a farmer. Things have improved, the money that I used to make form crops such as potatoes, would be used to buy fertilizers. These days I don’t spend anything on fertilizer. It’s improved life a great deal,” Kingori said.
His wife 35-year-old wife Ruth Wanjiru Muriithi, says that she had no access to health clinics or schools as a child in contrast to the facilities for young people in their community today.
“When I was a child we pretty much went to see traditional doctors, we were given remedies that were not very effective; but now, we have access to health care facilities and our children are treated for specific ailments and that has helped boost their health,” she said.
Today, her children attend local schools and aspire to continue to university –a realistic dream for many academically-minded young Kenyans.
“I want them to get to university, even when we talk they tell me how they want to be engineers, doctors the vision I have to see them complete their studies will happen,” Paul Muriithi Kingori said.
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