Wild chimpanzees in Uganda need our help to survive. Habitat destruction forces them into competition with villagers for space and resources, including access to surface water at forest streams. We will provide an immediate solution: building hand-dug wells in villages away from the forest. Wells give people access to clean safe water, and reduce daily, sometimes dangerous encounters with chimps. It's a win-win! A generous external (non-Global Giving) donor will match contributions up to $4,200!
In Uganda's Hoima District, 300 chimpanzees live in disappearing habitat around villages and have daily interactions with local villagers, particularly at water sources such as local forest streams where people collect water. Aggressive confrontations have led to children being seriously injured by chimpanzees. Providing clean and safe water wells in villages away from forest reduces encounters, benefitting both people and chimps.
BridgIT Water Foundation's hand-dug water wells offer a simple solution to this urgent problem. Hand-dug wells are very cost-effective and provide clean water within the village, negating the need to collect contaminated water from the forest. Safe fresh groundwater improves people's health outcomes immediately. Human-chimpanzees conflicts are reduced, and local tolerance towards the chimps is increased. Thus, this project improves people's health and welfare, and helps conserve chimpanzees.
This project will provide long-lasting safe, clean water to 2,000+ people, and reduce risk of dangerous interactions between chimpanzees and villagers, especially woman and children, who collect contaminated water from the chimp's habitat. This complements our partner, Bulindi Chimpanzee & Community Project's community conservation and tree-planting projects, which help local communities to conserve the chimpanzees' forest home and aid sustainable coexistence between people and chimps.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
