Tanya and her fight against COVID-19

Tanya, a high school graduate, lives in Gilgil in Nakuru county, Kenya. She plans on attending university later this year and wants to get her degree in social science. She currently works in an electronics store and has plans to open her own store, manage it for six months, leaving it to her mother to manage and attend university.

However, the threat of the global pandemic has forced her to put her plans on hold. To do her part in combating the spread of the virus, Tanya relies on her ingenuity and community outreach. Tanya installed a water jug technology outside her house, which uses a foot pedal to release water to wash hands. The touch-free technology allows visitors and people coming from outside to enter the house clean and virus free. Tanya has been an innovator since her early years. When she was in primary school she had invented this foot-pedal-water-jug technology at her old house. However, since Kenya reported its first COVID-19 case, Tanya recreated the technology in her current house. She says that the hardest part of the installation is digging holes in the ground, which is labor intensive. 

Tanya has been a member of the LEI club at her school and was even the chair of her school club. She attended the 2019 LEI Summit in Kenya. As a leader and believer in the Pay it forward ideology, she has been inviting other community members to follow in her footsteps and install the water jug technology in their houses. But Tanya admits that because of the threat of the pandemic, people are unable to leave their homes and spreading the idea of this technology is difficult. However, having used the contraption, some among her neighbors have adapted the water-jug technology in their homes, with Tanya’s help. 

Written by Sumathi Ramanath