Ayalagaya Community Survey

Solid data are crucial to develop strategies to deal with problems and maintain the things that are working well. Karimu ran a survey in the Ayalagaya ward to help improve the main guidelines of our strategy plan.

Seven surveyors covered the whole area going home to home, registering the GPS coordinates of all houses and interviewing the head of the households. With the help of an app created by volunteers, they were able to gather and register answers to topics ranging from demographics, education, sources of income, property, access to clean water, energy sources, hygiene, and health. The bullet list below shows a summary of the information obtained during the survey.

• Number of households: 2156

• Total population: 10,639

• Average size of household: 4.94 people

• Average age of population: 23.86

• School age population: 3867. This means that 168 children are not attending school.

• Analphabetism: 413 heads of households cannot read or write.

• Tribes: Iraqw: 85.58%, Chaga: 3.11%, Massai: 0.65%, Pare: 0.74%, others: 9.93%

• Religion: Roman Catholic: 67.63%, Pentecost: 16.47%, Lutheran: 6.73%, Muslim: 5.06%, others: 4.1%

• Access to water: Only 7.93% of households had access to water close to their houses

• Livestock: Households have in average 1.63 cows, 2.2 chicken, 1.04 goats, 0.19 pigs, 0.63 sheeps

• Agriculture: 86.55% of households grow staple crops with almost all growing maize

• Sources of energy: Only 12.52% of households have access to electricity and 92.5% of households rely on wood or charcoal for cooking

• Malaria: Only 75.1% of households own one or more mosquito nets

• Health: More than 90% of the households don’t know the most common places where bacteria live or ways of stopping bacteria spread

• Family planning: 38% of adult women use family planning methods

The information collected during the survey was analysed and used to adjust our 5-year strategy plan.

Expected benefits:

• Better understanding of Ayalagaya community