Ripple effects in Uganda
In an unprecedented global cooperation, 12 Water for All organizations on four continents have come together to support a large-scale intervention in the Pader District in Northern Uganda. The project is done in parallell with an intervention by the Peter Wallenberg Water for All Foundation in the same area. In total more than 30,000 people in 30 villages will be reached, ensuring sustainable access to water for at least 15 years.
Imagine Izzy. She has never been able to join her brothers at school. Like her mother and her grandmother her main task, every day until the day she dies, is to fetch water for her family. That is her main life mission. Not the one she chose herself of course, but the one that was chosen for her, by tradition and by the expectations put on her by the surrounding community.
IIzzy dreams of learning how to read and write, going to school and maybe even to the university in the big city. She would love to be a teacher…or perhaps a pilot, travelling far away and having the chance to see the world.
Perhaps this is what motivated the 12 Water for All organizations that decided to contribute to this joint endeavor to provide sustainable access to water, thereby changing the lives of thousands of Izzys, giving her and all other young girls the opportunity to make choices for themselves.
Using innovative methods
The Water for All project will go on for three years and aim to support 10,000 people in 30 villages by building or repairing boreholes. In parallel to this, a number of activities will be carried out to encourage behavioral change in regards to sanitation and hygiene. By targeting children, as direct beneficiaries of course, but also as agents of behavior and attitude change within the community, they can act as peer educators towards their families, neighbors and friends. The method is called PHASE and has been implemented at primary schools over a decade with proven positive results. The children learn how to e.g. wash their hands and then they teach the adults around them and are also there to remind them if they were to relapse into old habits.
Another method that will be used in the project is called UMOJA, meaning “oneness”. By clustering the village into smaller groups, where all households in each group need to improve their sanitation level – in essence constructing a latrine facility – before the village is rewarded its own water source. The method has proven effective in establishing sustainable sanitation and hygiene practices, putting a stop to open defecation which often is a problem in these sorts of areas.
An add-on to the Peter Wallenberg Water for All Foundation’s project
The Water for All project is adding to an intervention that will be funded by the Peter Wallenberg Water for All Foundation, also in the Pader district. The Foundation’s project will install a solar powered system to pump water to a reservoir tank that will serve 6 primary schools (5 100 pupils) and 18 villages with water through gravitational water flow. The two projects are closely interlinked and will support a part of the world in much need of support.
Partnering with Amref Health Africa
Amref is well-familiar with Africa as Africa is where they were founded, in 1957. For more than 60 years they have been providing medical aid to the most remote areas of Sub-Saharan Africa aboard small planes equipped as ambulances. With over 170 active projects in 35 countries, Amref is now the largest non-profit health organization operating in Africa, reaching about 10 million people per year though their different initiatives. They have been present in the Pader District in Uganda for 18 years and established successful ways of working together with the local communities.
