By Sanjita Gowda | Director of Partnerships
This summer, three students from the UCLA GlobeMed chapter traveled to Uganda to work with our grassroots partner, the Mpoma Community HIV/AIDS Initiative (MCHI) to evaluate and improve our Water Access, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Project. The team of students, Asli, Audrey, and Rebecca, and MCHI members, Peter, Fridah, Betty, Dennis, Kenneth, Ruth, and Prossy, accomplished a great deal this summer working with our dedicated water user committees!
During outreaches to our partner villages, our team learned that major repairs were needed in the village of Kyampisi and the Katoogo Health Center. Repairs occured to deepen the borehole in Kyampisi and to fix the handpump in the Katoogo Health Center. Additionally, a new water source was constructed in the village of Nyansi and serves over fifty households and a nearby school. Baseline surveys were conducted in the village of Nsanvu, where a borehole will be constructed next year to serve the surrounding community and a nearby school.
At the biannual meeting that occurs each summer, water user committees from our partnering villages came together to discuss and learn about safe WASH practices and latrine management. The theme of this year’s meeting was community empowerment and mobilization. A major strategy to improve water user fee collection was discussed and will be initiated this year. Each water user committee will be given one mobile phone in order for MCHI to remind committee members about fee collection and hosting community meetings.
Another focus of this summer’s work was addressing the sustainability of the WASH project. Water user fee collection was determined to be a major issue affecting water user committees' ability to protect their water sources. Therefore, a new initiative was developed, named the Project for Income Generation (PIG). This initiative involves giving each water user committee member one piglet. When the pigs mature their offspring will be given to other community members who will continue to raise more pigs, which can be sold for income that can be used to pay the water user fee. The PIG pilot will start in one village this month. If the project is successful, it will be expanded to other partnering villages.
In 2016, MCHI and GROW started a sanitary pad project at our partner school, Johnson Nkosi Memorial Primary School, to allow girls to have the resources and training to make reusable sanitary pads. Lack of access to menstrual hygiene products often inhibits female students from continuing their education. This is why access to these products is of utmost importance. This year the project was expanded to the Buntubulamu Primary School. Ruth, a teacher from JNMPS, will continue to train teachers at Butubulamu Primary School on how to make the reusable sanitary pads throughout the year.
We are excited to continue assessing the productivity of our project’s new initiatives in the coming months!
By Sanjita Gowda | Director of Partnerships
By Sanjita Gowda | Director of Partnerships
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