SEQUIM — This effort, gifts from thousands of miles away, aren’t just about money or resources or water. They are about relationships: the ones that change because of another’s heart, and the ones that can span across the globe.
That’s the way Agnes Kioko sees it, as she and fellow Kenya native Regina Mbaluku greet a group of Sequim men covered in sawdust on Jack Tatom’s property just north of Sequim.
Led by Tatom, a group of men meet to take wood donated — primarily from Sequim-based Town & Country Tree Experts — to sell, with funds going to the Seattle-based Path From Poverty. The nonprofit, in turn, purchases 10,000-gallon water tanks that go to women in Kenya, overseen by Kioko.
“It is encouraging. I’ve never see a group of men meet in a central place and do what you’re doing,” she told them on a brisk October afternoon.
Over several years, the Sequim group has raised enough funds to purchase 80 water retention tanks, said Bonita Piper, board president of Path From Poverty.
The nonprofit supports a number of women’s group projects in Kenya, including business and leadership training; clean, safe water in the form of large rainwater catchment tanks; solar power, including panels, chargers and utility packs; and education scholarships. (See pathfrompoverty.org.)
Their effort drew Kioko, Mbaluku and Piper to the Olympic Peninsula during a visit to Seattle.
“This is amazing; this is my favorite fundraiser,” Piper said.
The tanks aren’t just about the valuable resource of rainwater collected in the tanks, she said. It keeps Kenyan women from having to take long walks to places where potable water exists.
“Most of them walk four or five miles there, then back,” Piper said.
Instead, the tanks free them up to take on work and contribute to the household.
That reality, Kioko said, made a big difference in her own home. She said her husband was not an agreeable man for years until she was able to get the water tank.
“He is a more supportive man now,” she said.
“Relationships change dramatically.”
Similar international projects raise funds to build wells, which are helpful, Piper said, but can cost about $20,000.
The water tanks, she pointed out, cost much less — about $1,400 each— and can be distributed to more recipients and be filled with rainwater.
Kioko now oversees groups totaling hundreds of women in Kenya who’ve received assistance from Path From Poverty.
“Agnes is one of the most ingenious … motivating women,” Piper said.
Effort’s origins
The group of Sequim men come from disparate backgrounds — a boat inspector, a mason, a computer company employee and such — but most are 70 or older, and several are well past that benchmark, Tatom said.
“It started out as a money-maker for Path From Poverty,” Tatom said in a previous interview, overseeing the group of about a half-dozen cutting and stacking cords of wood on his property north of Sequim. Then, he said, it became a way to get exercise.
“Then it became a way to be with friends.”
He said the group formed some years ago and was for a time associated with the Sequim Sunrise Rotary Club’s international donations. Mary Jane Apple, who helps connect the woodcutters group with the nonprofit, said she was taking a course in spiritual direction when she got connected with Piper, president of Path From Poverty’s board of directors.
“We talked about this program and I got super excited,” Apple said, “especially as a social worker [who finds that] handouts are not effective very often. These women are really working to support themselves.”
The connection paid off in another way. Along with donations from the woodcutting group, Sequim High School’s Interact Club has taken up its annual Walk For Water, which sees students and Rotarians each spring walk about four miles from Sequim Middle School to the Dungeness River and back, carrying gallons of river water to raise funds and awareness for those in other countries who walk numerous hours daily to gather water.
While the Rotary group, to which many of the woodcutters belong, decided to go in a different direction for their international support, Tatom said the woodcutters stayed together, keeping locals in ready supply of firewood while continuing to donate to Path From Poverty.
The men gather on Monday mornings, most recently on Tatom’s property, and other days as necessary, to split the wood with axes, chainsaws or a wood splitter.
The wood is bundled into cords — usually 4 feet tall, 4 feet deep and 8 feet long, for 128 cubic feet — and then sold to local customers, with the money sent on to the international aid organization.
“It’s mostly rain or shine,” Tatom said. “Normally the weather cooperates.”
The sun was shining for Kioko and Mbaluku’s early October visit. They thanked the men for their efforts, took photos and recorded videos with their newfound friends.
“This is the best; this [fundraising] is not easy unless you are motivated,” Kioko said.
“They have changed lives.”
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Michael Dashiell is a former editor of the Sequim Gazette of the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which also is composed of other Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News and Forks Forum.
