By Maya Meinert
Special to the Daily Press

DOWNTOWN — It’s not the Hollywood ending most people envision, where helping those in need in Africa usually centers around the latest celebrity adoption of a baby there.

Santa Monica resident Kristen Kosinski is one of those rare breeds, having left behind a life as a studio executive to pursue a passion — supporting women’s empowerment in Kenya. The Pittsburgh native worked for 10 years at Paramount, casting and overseeing primetime televisions shows, including “JAG,” “Girlfriends” and “Becker,” before the opportunity to go to Africa presented itself.

“I had been dreaming of going to Africa to work with tribal women since I was 6 years old,” Kosinski said. “I had traveled a lot in the developing world and had done a lot of work in terms of women’s empowerment, but had never been to Africa. I really followed my heart.

“I left Paramount the same day I went to Kenya,” she said. “I was packing up my boxes and had my good-bye lunch and flew out that afternoon. It was pretty intense. It was maybe the most intense week of my life.”

Kosinski wasn’t looking to go on safari once on the continent. She was more interested in connecting with people. In the summer of 2005, she found a village in the Samburu district of Northern Kenya, run by women for women who had been victims of domestic violence and rape, and widows without property rights. The village was started by Rebecca Samaria Lolosoli, who had been born and raised in Samburu.

“She offered to take me around to meet these women,” Kosinski said. “I spent a lot time going from village to village meeting women, and I kept hearing the same story over and over again — ‘I don’t have water.’”

And so The Samburu Project was born.

Upon arriving back in Santa Monica, where Kosinski has lived for the last eight and a half years, she started a project to drill wells in Samburu villages. So far, the project has drilled and installed four wells, each of which takes two to three days to complete and costs about $10,000.

“It’s so funny because people call me the water girl now,” Kosinski said.

As founder and executive director of The Samburu Project, she has spoken at schools, including USC, and to Peace Corps groups to get the word out. She and her friends have held fundraisers all over the country, and there is a documentary in the works.

Last week, Kosinski sat down with the Daily Press to talk about the hardships the Samburu villagers face and the goals of the project.

What did the Samburu women say to make you want to start this project?

“These women said, ‘Kristen, tell us how to make money. We want to have incomes and have empowerment.’ But I don’t think it’s possible for them to do that unless they have water. I believe if we empower women, the entire community will be taken care of — the men and the children and the women. You have to fill that basic need of water first, as a foundation.”

Your goal is to drill 25 wells, right?

“Yeah, and maybe we’ll drill 100. I just felt like I wanted to have a really concrete goal. And I feel like, in this particular community, a village called Wamba [within the Samburu district], if we drill 25 wells there, I think it would make a significant impact on the community as a whole. Instead of putting myself out and doing a lot of things in a lot of places, I wanted to concentrate on one area and know that I could really make an impact on a larger group of people and then move towards that kind of development — women’s income-generating activities, health care, education.”

So how did you first discover that the real problem there was water and not AIDS, poverty or hunger?

“It was always really open when I was there. Every single group I went to, the biggest issue was the fact that they don’t have water. And the fact that they don’t have water affects every single aspect of their life — everything. If women have to spend their day looking for water, they can’t make money. And if they can’t make money, they never have the ability to say ‘no.’ They’re always beholden to men. So there’s lots of rape, [and] women marry men they don’t want to — polygamy is part of their society. The spread of HIV/AIDS will continue because women can’t make men, who they’re married to, when they have sex with them wear a condom because women don’t have a voice at all. And they’ll never have a voice unless they make money and have independence.

That’s just one aspect. With health issues, even if you have medicine when you get sick, whether it’s malaria or HIV, if you don’t have water, how can that medicine be effective? Kids don’t go to school because they don’t have water. Young girls, especially, and young boys, too, don’t go to school because they’re going to fetch the water with their mother. Without water, there’s no possibility for development, in my estimation.

They get up at 3 o’clock in the morning, and they walk all day long in hopes to get water. And if they don’t get up early enough, the water is dry. And the water they do get is really dirty — it’s muddy and dirty and has animal waste. It’s not clean. And they have to carry these heavy containers back to their village, if they have the water. It’s like carrying an Arrowhead bottle on your back, and it’s miles home. And along the way, they have to deal with wild animals. And also there’s the issue of rape, which happens often with women and young girls who are going to water points because they’re out there walking in the bush. The water issue was very, very clear.”

Why do you want to make water an issue people should be aware of?

“When you talk about water issues, it’s definitely not the first thing you hear about in the media. It’s become much more topical in the last year. We’ve heard a lot about HIV/AIDS, poverty, hunger ... but water wasn’t something the media was talking about. My only estimation is that water is not a sexy topic. It’s something that we can absolutely not relate to. Even if you’re homeless on the Third Street Promenade, you have access to water. Everybody has access to water. We’re so disconnected from where the water comes from. You can just open up your tap, and you have as much water as you’ll ever need. That was a big part of my job last year, and the years to come, is to try to allow people to understand what that need might be like.

They didn’t believe they were going to have water until they actually had it. They just expect never to have access to it. It dawned on me a month after I came home, that I don’t even get it. I’ve been there, I’ve sat with these people, I’ve had so many conversations, and I don’t get what it would be like not to have water.”

What was it like when you were visiting?

“I’d bring water with me, and I’d stay in town. There’s a home that I stay in where there’s actually a pipe — a tap outside the home. And they don’t usually keep it on because it costs money. So if I come, I can pay someone to undo the tap so I can actually have water.”

Were the people there really receptive to you coming in?

“[It was] amazing. There’s such a need, that it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re here.’ Everyone is very excited about the idea. But there is a lot of politics. There’s chiefs in all the areas, and of course, the chief wants water where his people are because it will make him look good. So we had to deal a little bit with the politics. Fortunately, I had Mama Musa [a community leader]. She was clear about the different clans, so we don’t give all the water to one clan. That seems unfair. So she really helped it to be equitable and making sure things run smooth.

There’s a lot of politics — it’s worse than the entertainment business! Everyone’s got an agenda, everyone wants their way. It took a lot of energy to deal with that. Fortunately, I’m well trained.

The communities generally have been really grateful. Their lives are so simple. They just need day-to-day survival. It’s a lot of singing and dancing and celebrating, and you drill a well and they give you a goat — someone slaughters it, cooks it on a fire and then everyone eats it. It’s definitely a really amazing celebration of life.”

What do you do on this side of the world?

“The biggest part of the organization is about fundraising. Without money, you can’t do anything. You can talk in theory about a lot of things, but without money, it’s not possible. So the focus the first year was to raise money. We didn’t raise a ton of money, but we raised enough money to drill four wells. We raised about $65,000. It was all through individual donors. So I really reached out to my friends and family and business acquaintances. The thought was to raise enough money to go back, drill some wells and create a really amazing template, and say, ‘Hey, look, we can do this.’ So I gave my time and didn’t make any money [personal income] for a year.

My job is about educating people and creating awareness and spreading awareness ... The Samburu Project has been my life.”