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What type of organization best describes you?
Community-based organization (non-profit organization) -
Describe your organization.
The Demography Project is an independent, youth-led, non-profit organization that leverages civic technology, citizen science, collective action and grassroots journalism towards amplifying community voices and enhancing citizen capacity to participate in advancing accountable governance, participatory democracy & environmental conservation.
It is registered in Kenya as a community-based organization under Kenya’s Community Groups registration Act No. 30 of 2022. Our volunteer membership is based at and hosted in Kihumo Village - Rungiri, off Magana/Githieya Road in the outskirts of Kikuyu Municipality, Kiambu County, Kenya.
Our mission is to promote an enlightened and responsible Kenyan citizenry committed towards democratic principles and actively engaged in the practice of democracy and sustainable development. Our vision is Empowered communities where individuals thrive & households flourish. Our website is info.demographyproject.org [1] -
Describe your project.
Our flagship project is called Infrastracker (portmanteau for infrastructure & tracker), available on infrastracker.demographyproject.org [2]. It is a public domain air quality and public infrastructure monitoring project that leverages evidence-based citizen science and practical community engagement for sustainable atmospheric resource responsibility in Kenya.
We have established a network of 5 smart weather stations installed in communities characterized as climate-vulnerable, water-scarce, disenfranchised & smallholder farmers, which offer localized data-driven insights for collective action & awareness on atmospheric & freshwater resource management. As these communities & households are also at risk of degraded air quality due to a rapid expansionist road network strategy by the Government of Kenya and domestic use of biomass for cooking & heating due to prevailing poverty rates, the Infrastracker project seeks to bridge access to informed & actionable insights on ambient air quality for reduced exposure to outdoor & indoor particulate matter emissions.
Through Infrastracker, we are signatories to and valuable members of global and local climate action movements and coalitions including the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Air Quality Flag Program, Africa Civic-Tech Network, Citizen Science Africa Association, Clean Air Catalyst, Climate and Clean Air Coalition, among others. We have adopted a rights-based approach to promote ownership of atmospheric/air resource data for localized climate action. The topics that Infrastracker covers include air quality, physical activity and climate change by documenting the real-time exposure & adverse health/environmental risks from utilizing biomass as domestic energy source, passengers using largely-unroadworthy and loosely-regulated public transport vehicles and street-level pedestrians in selected urban areas in Kenya.
The Infrastracker project is currently being delivered through two distinct cost-effective activities:
- Street-by-Street Air Quality (SSAQ) mapping: We deploy volunteers each with a portable air quality monitor, a portable action camera and branded t-shirts with information, education & communication (IEC) material including flyers and brochures to inform pedestrians and other road users on the real-time air quality and the negative health/environmental impacts of degraded air quality. One of the urban street-by-street air quality monitoring activities was held in Kikuyu Municipality in 2024; watch the activity here: Kikuyu Municipality Street-by-Street Air Quality Mapping;
- Public transport awareness campaign: Despite public transport being the least destructive mode of mass transportation globally, the proliferation of public service vehicles (PSVs) called matatus in Kenya’s leading cities has counterintuitively led to higher exposure to pollutants including emissions and obscenely loud music. As with the SSAQs above, we deploy portable air quality monitors, action cameras and sound monitors in matatus during both peak & off-peak periods to document air & noise pollution for policy development & implementation;
Through the April 2025 PurpleAir Donation Program, we seek to add another perspective on atmospheric resource responsibility as follows:
- Domestic & Community Air Quality monitoring: Rural households & communities like ours still rely on biomass for domestic energy (firewood, charcoal and cowdung) which especially exposes women & children to adverse air quality and its resulting health effects. Should our application be successful, we seek to: (i) deploy PurpleAir Flex monitors across our village & neighbouring villages for documentation on overall ambient air quality resulting from ongoing road construction in our vicinity and (ii) distribute PurpleAir Touch in consenting volunteer households to document the level of air pollution from biomass as domestic energy source and its health impacts on women & children. With the generated multimedia content and open air quality data, we will embark on publishing our outputs in a series of videos, infographics and other content on social media platforms to amplify the case for atmospheric resource responsibility through mass engagement. Additionally, we are developing a community engagement civic education curriculum domesticated in local languages to enhance understanding on air quality as part of climate action. We project that this will directly impact 32,000 residents of Kihumo & neighbouring villages, in addition to indirectly informing 120,000 residents of Kikuyu Municipality.
- Which PurpleAir model(s) are you interested in and how many would you want for your project?
Towards meeting our goals of advancing atmospheric resource responsibility in our village & neighboring communities, we are in need of:
- PurpleAir Flex (5 pax)
- PurpleAir Touch (5 pax)