Kenya Slum Transformed by Clean Water and the Gospel

SCRIPT:

[Notes:DIP FROM BLACK TO DRONE SHOT OF KIBERA]

Kibera faces extreme poverty AND gang violence, WHILE LACKING basic amenities like clean water and sanitation, earning its reputation as one of the “darkest, filthiest, and most hopeless places in the world.”

[TAKE SOT

NAME:GEORGE THOMAS, KIBERA SLUM, NAIROBI, KENYA

NUMBER:3855

INCUE:walking through slum neighborhood surrounded by small metal shack homes

OUTCUE:standup1

AT:0:40

TO:0:53

DURATION:0:13]

(“Kibera is Africa’s largest slum and this is what a typical house looks like.”)

MEASURING ONLY EIGHT BY EIGHT FEET, Homes CONSIST of mud walls, a corrugated tin roof, and either a dirt or concrete floor.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Chris Beth, The Bucket Ministry

NUMBER:3494

AT:4:56:06

TO:4:55:34

DURATION:0:04]

(“And there’s not a bathroom in the home, there’s not a kitchen area in their home. It’s basically sitting and sleeping only.”)

Chris Beth, founder of The Bucket Ministry, first stepped into Kibera in 2017. What he saw shook him to his core.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Chris Beth, The Bucket Ministry

NUMBER:3494

AT:4:56:55

TO:4:55:34

DURATION:0:04]

(“There wasn’t one home that had access to clean, safe drinking water.”)

Water here isn’t a blessing—it’s a curse.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:George Thomas

NUMBER:People lining up to fill their jerry cans with water

INCUE:Standup2

AT:0:00

TO:0:38

DURATION:0:38]

(“This is a common sight here, folks have lined up their jerry cans to get water. The original source of where this water is coming from is typically clean and safe to drink. It has to then travel through this intricate spider web-like system of pipes. The problem is that many of those pipes are broken and contaminated water ends up coming into those pipes. The Bucket Ministry has shown through their research that once the water gets to this point the water is still very contaminated.”)

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Chris Beth, The Bucket Ministry

NUMBER:3185

INCUE:in front of pipes hanging over river

AT:3:05:55

DURATION:0:33]

(“So what you see is these snaked water lines all over this place that are on the surface, and most of them are illegally connected, they’re scabbed on to each other, and all of them leak. Those leaks will actually start to suck sewage water into the pipes and contaminate the entire system with E coli, maybe dysentery, typhoid, cholera.”)

Endless piles of trash scatter throughout Kibera. The absence of proper sewage leaves human waste on the streets, which THEN ends up in the water.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:GEORGE THOMAS, KIBERA SLUM, NAIROBI, KENYA

NUMBER:3855

INCUE:standup 3 in front of shack

AT:0:24

TO:0:38

DURATION:0:14]

(“The official statistics say there are 78 latrines in all of Kibera serving over four hundred thousand people. Let that settle in for a second.”)

Beth recognized the urgent need for clean water and sent a team of 60 to canvass the slum.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Chris Beth, The Bucket Ministry

NUMBER:3218

INCUE:<03:16:38>

OUTCUE:Beth and George overlooking slum from hiltop

AT:3:16:27

TO:4:55:34

DURATION:0:21]

(“And all they did for four months was knock on every single one of the doors in this place and we found out that there were 81,077 homes. We found out that there’s about 408,000 people created in God’s image that are sequestered to live in this place.”)

In 2000, The Bucket Ministry began a groundbreaking effort—distributing life-saving water filters to EACH home HERE.

George Owegi, a local elder here, was initially skeptical.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:George Owegi, Kibera Elder

NUMBER:3180

AT:2:57:49

DURATION:0:11]

(“Many NGOs, many people have come, and they have never made any impact, so when I saw them I thought they are just the same like other people.”)

BUT THIS EFFORT CHANGED MINDS, AS Beth partnered with Sawyer to distribute plastic buckets, each equipped with a filtration system that MAKES contaminated water drinkable.

[Notes:ANIMATED GRAPHIC OF HOW FILTER WORKS]

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Chris Beth, The Bucket Ministry

NUMBER:3494

AT:4:54:13

TO:4:54:24

DURATION:0:11]

(“There’s these straws, these membranes and the contaminants, the dirty water are getting caught on the outside of these membranes. And then the clean water comes through the inside of the membrane.”)

100 local missionaries, mostly Kibera residents, joined IN BY installing filters and teaching residents how to maintain them.

MISSIONARY LEADER Phoebe Wafula SAYS the impact was CLEAR after ONLY about 70 days of using the filters.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Phoebe Wafula, Kenyan Missionary Leader

NUMBER:3262

AT:3:29:17

TO:3:29:27

DURATION:0:10]

(“As we are speaking today, there is a lot of changes, especially through clean, safe drinking water. A lot of diseases have been eradicated.”)

[TAKE Sound Up

NAME:NATS FROM ANIMATED VIDEO EXPLAINING USE OF BARCODE ON FILTER

NUMBER:WHAT IS MISSION MAPPING

AT:0:23

TO:0:25

DURATION:0:02]

(“It all starts with a barcode on a filter.”)

The Bucket Ministry used a mapping software to track every filter.

[TAKE Sound Up

NAME:NATS FROM ANIMATED VIDEO EXPLAINING USE OF BARCODE ON FILTER

NUMBER:WHAT IS MISSION MAPPING

AT:0:25

TO:0:38

DURATION:0:13]

(“At the point of distribution, we scan the barcode and deliver the filter to the recipient family. We then collect baseline data on the family’s physical health and spiritual orientation to chart their progress.”)

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Chris Beth, The Bucket Ministry

NUMBER:3495

AT:5:04:48

TO:5:04:53

DURATION:0:05]

(“And then every follow up visitation, we scan the barcode again and we collect new data.”)

The result…

[TAKE Sound Up

NAME:VIDEO SHOWING BLUE GPS DOTS OF EVERY SINGLE FILTER DISTRIBUTED IN KIBERA

NUMBER:KIBERA PROGRESS MAP

AT:0:08

TO:0:14

DURATION:0:06]

(“What you are seeing right now is a time progression map with the blue dots being actual locations of filters distributed in the Kibera by the Bucket Ministry teams…”)

Beth’s team distributed 81,782 filters, PROVIDING clean water to all 408,478 residents of the slum. The project REACHED COMPLETION IN December AS Michael Wanjohi BECAME the last filter RECIPIENT.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Michael Wanjohi, Filter Recipient

NUMBER:3151

AT:2:33:42

TO:2:33:56

DURATION:0:05]

(“It’s a miracle to me, for me it’s a 100 percent miracle.”)

And the transformation DOESN’T STOP THERE.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Chris Beth, The Bucket Ministry

NUMBER:3495

AT:5:01:03

TO:5:01:09

DURATION:0:06]

(“Water is the secondary reason why we are there. The gospel is the sole reason.”)

Missionaries visited every single home here sharing the gospel.

[TAKE Sound Up

NAME:VIDEO SHOWING WHITE GPS DOTS WHERE PEOPLE GOT SAVED

NUMBER:KIBERA PROGRESS MAP

AT:0:24

TO:0:36

DURATION:0:12]

(“Next: you will see white dots populating. These white dots represent where our local missionary teams have witnessed professions of faith by the families that have received the life-saving water filters and heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Again, these are precise GPS positions and dates of the interaction.”)

[TAKE Sound Up

NAME:NATS OF CHURCH WORSHIP

AT:0:00

TO:0:02

DURATION:0:02]

LOCAL PASTOR AND 44 YEAR RESIDENT Raphael Dihanda, TELLS CBN NEWS no NGO has ever shared the gospel so widely in Kibera.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Raphael Dihanda, Grace Revival Church

NUMBER:3172

AT:2:43:16

TO:2:43:27

DURATION:0:11]

(“When The Bucket Ministry came in, and they recruited the missionaries, going and supplying the filters and the buckets, people started accepting the gospel. And we can see now the great harvest is coming in the Kingdom of God.”)

MORE 22,000 people gave their lives to Christ AND THE MIRACLES KEEP GOING.

[TAKE Sound Up

NAME:VIDEO SHOWING YELLOW GPS DOTS WHERE PEOPLE WERE DISCIPLINED IN THE WORD OF GOD

NUMBER:KIBERA PROGRESS MAP

AT:0:43

TO:0:54

DURATION:0:11]

(“Lastly: You will see yellow dots populating on the top of the blue and white dots. These represent the actual locations and dates of when our teams have taught on-going discipleship lessons in the homes of filter recipients.”)

The team shared over half a million discipleship lessons.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Raphael Dihanda, Grace Revival Church

NUMBER:3173

INCUE:3172

AT:2:55:52

TO:2:56:05

DURATION:0:13]

(“Nobody has ever done this. Nobody has ever done this. Thinking of visiting someone’s house once, twice, thrice. It has never been done.”)

Owegi says the spiritual effects rippled ACROSS the slum, transforming lives in ways no one expected.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:George Owegi, Kibera Elder

NUMBER:3180

AT:3:01:09

TO:3:01:22

DURATION:0:13]

(“People are testifying. People are leaving crime, they are changing their ways and they have reformed.”)

Prostitution, which had been a survival mechanism for so many women in Kibera, also began to fade.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Phoebe Wafula, Kenyan Missionary Leader

NUMBER:3262

AT:3:30:19

TO:3:30:27

DURATION:0:08]

(“People didn’t know Christ but what we have done and the work that has been done in Kibera, through God, is really tremendous.”)

[TAKE Sound Up

NAME:NATS OF BAPTISM DAY

NUMBER:DOZENS OF PEOPLE GETTING BAPTIZED

AT:0:00

TO:0:02

DURATION:0:02]

More than 1,500 people were baptized, including Samuel Mwang.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:Samuel Mwang, New Believer

NUMBER:3942

AT:0:55

DURATION:0:10]

(“I was a very bad person before today, I was untrustworthy, I was a thief, a drug addict, but God healed me today. Missionaries visited my home and told me about Jesus Christ and I accepted Him into my life.”)

With work in Kibera complete, Beth’s team is now taking the mission to a nearby slum.

[TAKE SOT

NAME:George Thomas, Kawangware, Nairobi

NUMBER:3905

INCUE:standup 4

AT:0:05

TO:0:18

DURATION:0:13]

(“The Bucket Ministry has decided to come to this community on the outskirts of Nairobi known as Kawangware as their next project. According to their initial assessment, there are about 153 thousand home.”)

[Notes:MISSION MAP DASHBOARD SHOWING LATEST NUMBERS ON FILTERS, GOSPEL PREACHING AND SALVATION IN KAWANGWARE]

Work began January 1st WITH SOME 3,000 water filters ALREADY distributed AND nearly 600 people giving their lives to Jesus Christ. Beth aims to reach all 710,000 residents here with the gospel’s LIVING WATER within the next four years.

George Thomas, CBN News, Nairobi, Kenya.

Story Provided By:
Stephen Little, Sr. Producer, CBN News

Producing Organization
CBN News, https://cbn.com/news

Recording Location
Nairobi, Kenya

Reporter / Producer
George Thomas

Organization featured in this Story
The Bucket Ministry, https://thebucketministry.org/

People Interviewed and their Titles
noted on the script

Restrictions (if any)
none