By Tom Webber | BridgIT Water USA Development Director
During the last quarter, BridgIT Water Foundation was able to refurbish 2 water wells under this crowdfunding campaign. The beneficiaries living in Kigogola and Kitovu Villages are very grateful to once again have potable water with easy access to their homes.
Sustainability is very important to the village residents, because in both villages the wells broke down over 5 years ago, so the women and children were forced to walk at least 2 km to the swamp to collect dirty water. This back-breaking chore occupied over 2 hours/day for many people, taking time from productive work or school. Clearly there is a big incentive to keep the wells working far into the future. BridgIT and its implementing partner, Suubi Community Projects Uganda, trained teams to maintain the wells. In addition, the Water User Committees established a small user fee to build up a maintenance fund so the villages will have the funds needed for future repairs.
As Kitovu Village resident Sharif (not his real name) states: “We are committed to raise our monthly user fees as we have been trained so that if this borehole ever needs a repair in the future, we will be prepared. It is sad that we have suffered with dirty water, yet clean water was in this well.”
In addition to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, in September the Ugandan government declared an emergency associated with an Ebola virus outbreak in Central Uganda. This crisis impacted BridgIT’s work because Mukono District is also located in Central Uganda, and the refurb teams experienced safety delays.
WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) is an important part of BWF projects, and villagers are trained in effective measures such as hand washing, which help to contain the spread of disease. While normal to westerners, when people have to walk miles to collect water that is often contaminated, hand washing takes a back seat. Accessible water in the village allows people the luxury of abundant clean water for WASH solutions.
Thank you to our generous contributors for funding to allow us to refurbish these wells.
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