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History Joshua Mukusya

The origins of Excellent Development can be traced back to 1984 when Simon Maddrell and Kenyan farmer Joshua Mukusya met.

At that time, Joshua had already had many years' experience of dam-building, and organising self-help, educational, health and agricultural projects in his native eastern Kenya.

Simon and Joshua teamed up and together organised a youth expedition to Africa to build dams and water tanks. Further expeditions followed which paid for 140 water tanks and 20 dams.

After a successful tree-planting pilot in 2001, tree planting was added to the core activities of building sand dams and digging terraces. In May the following year, Simon founded Excellent Development Limited in the UK (ED UK), which achieved registered UK charity status in November 2002.
 
In January 2003, Joshua was employed by ED UK as Eastern Kenya Project Consultant to help develop programmes with the self-help groups he was working with in the area.
 
In April 2005 Excellent Development (Kenya) was registered as a Kenyan NGO, with Joshua taking the role of Executive Officer.
 
In July 2008 Excellent Development USA was registered as a 501(c) NFP in the United States.