Clean Water Uganda Project #58278

Increasing access to safe drinking water & hygiene

by Charitable Incorporated Community Organization Uganda

Project Report | Jul 31, 2023
Safe water in Uganda: An interview with Ronnie Kaw

By Cico Uganda | Organization Leardership

This man has a big dream to bring safe water and sanitation to all the children Charitable Incorporated Community Organization Uganda serves in Uganda.

But it’s not only a dream; he also has a strategy, expertise and the experience to make it a reality. Ronnie Kaweesa is Cico Uganda’s water expert with extensive experience in bringing safe water to communities.

Ronnie sat down with us and answered a few questions about our Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programs in Uganda.

What is your goal for WASH in Uganda?

My goal is for every Community to have an improved water source within 500 metres. We are at about 60 per cent, although that will continually change as we grow. We have been blessed by the Lord. I am beginning to see what the Lord told me in the beginning, that “I will do this.”

What inspires you to help people get access to safe water?

I grew up in Kampala, Uganda, where I was used to just turning on a tap and having water. You begin to take it for granted. But I remember being in a rural area and seeing a girl going to fetch water. It was very hot and it was very far. It took her two hours there and two hours back. She would take a jerry can with her, and by the time she would come back, she would have drunk half the water because she’s too thirsty to make the journey without it. Seeing things like this really changes your thinking.

What’s one of the things you’ve learned in your experience with WASH?

To have any sustainability in your program, you have to have the involvement of the people. If you’re going to build infrastructure in a community, it’s so crucial that you involve the community in what you’re considering. The community will feel part of it and value it.

In our water program, we always have a local contribution in either money or labour because it represents them saying, “We value this enough to pay for it. We just don’t have enough.” We use local materials so they’re available to the community when they need to repair them. You have to determine what your supply chain system is and use local materials so it can be maintained and sustained. Then we train people in the community to be the mechanics for the hand pumps.

A lot of people are interested in helping people get access to safe water. Why do we also include sanitation (access to latrines) and hygiene training in our program?

Water, sanitation and hygiene are triplets. You cannot separate them. You can have the infrastructure for safe water in place, but water still has to get from point A to point B and various things can happen along the way to dirty the water. It’s to bury your head in the sand to separate these components. Cico Uganda includes both the “hardware,” the actual infrastructure, and the “software” components, the training such as how you maintain the infrastructure and how to have proper hygiene and sanitation.

How does Charitable Incorporated Community Organization Uganda model of partnering with the local communities benefit WASH projects?

The church is stable and it’s going to be there for a long time. They feel called by God to transform their community. They are part of the community and they are respected. We enable the church to be able to respond to the needs so that the community will see the church as the light.

What is one of your favourite stories from a Charitable Incorporated Community Organization Uganda water project?

My favourite is when a Local Community captures the vision and gains their own momentum far beyond even what you had anticipated. You see a WASH program actually transforming a community. People have caught it. They are transcending the poverty mindset. They are saying, “We have resources and we can do something for ourselves.”

There was a community that collected fees for their well, and they were able to use the profit to buy food from a bumper harvest. They stored the crops and were later able to sell them for a good profit. Another church built classrooms with the profit they made from their water project. Such stories make your day. Aside from looking at the health statistics and seeing an improvement, when you begin to see people taking charge and changing their mindset, when you see the church giving leadership, when you see children being involved, speaking out and making decisions, that makes your day.

Give today to not only ensure children have access to safe water, but also to help communities escape a poverty mindset and help churches be a light in their community!

Links:

Permalink

Apr 30, 2023
YOUR GIFT OF WATER TO COMMUNITIES WAS INCREDIBLE

By James Aleko | Project Director

Water flowing from a tap stand is not the conclusion of a water project. It’s actually a beginning of sorts.

For our team in Uganda, extending relationships beyond clean water matters, and that’s why months after the taps turn on, a group from the community is gathered – to measure results, listen to feedback, improve methods, and, most importantly, hear the stories of significant change that take place in the lives of families. It helps all of us see if the results achieved are being sustained.

The story Deodanta shared with the group was eye-opening.

“Charitable Incorporated Community Organization Uganda found us in a bad state on matters of water accessibility. We had water that we were drinking and using to cook which was very dirty. This would result in family members falling sick from diseases like diarrhea and typhoid. This water was not only dirty, but it was also too far. We would wake up our children very early, around 6 AM, so that they could go to fetch water at the stream and would come back at around 9 AM, which always made them late for classes.”

She and other parents in their village had been noticing stunted growth among their children because the burden of water collection often falls to them, spending hours daily carrying large jerry cans of water from far distances.

Can you imagine your child’s health, growth, and future affected because they don’t have clean water nearby?

The contrast between life before and after clean water is radical, however, and these parents have noticed their children’s health improving since access to that safe water arrived.

“Our families do not have problems of falling sick like back then before Charitable Incorporated Community Organization Uganda brought us water and the fact that it is now easily accessed, our children have been able to attend school with no interruptions. Our families are now stable!”

“I want to thank Charitable Incorporated Community Organization Uganda for the good training they gave us. Our children no longer go late to school. Our children now no longer feel the heaviness of the jerry cans because of the short distance they walk now. I could walk like 3 hours from my working schedule to fetch water, but now you can’t imagine that I have just come from my garden, and water is just meters from my home!”

“Charitable Incorporated Community Organization Uganda taught us about sanitation and hygiene now our homes look beautiful because we improved our sanitation and we see now we are better than how we were before.”

Thanks to your continued support of our Increasing access to safe drinking water & hygiene community reached the national standard for sanitation, meaning they’ve put critical hygiene practices in place to improve health and eliminate disease.

We are seeing the most extreme level of poverty being eradicated from communities!

The investment you have made in giving clean water and hygiene training to people in Uganda is having an incredibly positive impact. We couldn’t be more thankful.

Links:

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.