Excellent! - excellentdevelopment.com

The origins of Excellent Development can be traced back to 1984 - Simon Maddrell wanted to organise a youth expedition to build dams and water tanks in Africa and met Kenyan Joshua Mukusya while he was on a trip to the UK.

Joshua is the founder of the Utooni Development Project (UDP), established in 1978. After Joshua returned home following his father’s death, he brought six families together to tackle their problems of water and food shortages. He had previously been working as both a pastor and an agricultural manager on a variety of plantations. UDP grew to over 50 families and has continued working for an almost unprecedented 30 years. Joshua went on to work for a number of agencies to spread his work with UDP more widely.

In July 1985, Joshua enabled Simon to take a youth expedition to Kenya to build dams and water tanks. In 1988, Simon returned to study the impacts of UDP members’ work in comparison to non-members of the project as part of his degree in Peace Studies at Bradford University.

Further expeditions followed including one in 1995 which gave disadvantaged young people from Forest Gate, London, the opportunity to build dams and water tanks with self-help groups in that area. In total, the expeditions organised by Simon and Joshua over these years enabled 12 sand dams and 140 domestic water tanks to be built.

During a trip in 1997, Simon and Joshua discussed how tree planting could be successfully implemented in that semi-arid area of Kenya, because previous efforts had failed. In 2001, following his voluntary redundancy, Simon funded a pilot tree-planting project with Joshua and UDP.

Following the success of this pilot, Simon set up Excellent Development Limited in the UK (ED UK), with the help of old friends Stephen Owen, Darren Worsley and Chris Pockett. The organisation achieved registered UK charity status in November 2002.

In 2003, Joshua acted as Eastern Kenya Project Consultant to develop programmes with the self-help groups in the area. In April 2005 Excellent Development Kenya (EDK) was setup by Simon, Joshua and Esther Ithau (Chairwoman of Utooni Development Project). EDK was registered as a Kenyan NGO (non-governmental organisation) with Joshua taking the role of Executive Officer, Simon as Chairman, Esther as Treasurer and Jenine Langrish (ED UK Trustee) as Secretary.

In July 2008, Excellent Development USA was registered as an independent 501(c) not-for-profit in the United States sharing the same Vision and Mission as ED UK.