Water Access, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) Project

GlobeMed at UCLA's chapter has just resumed the 2017-2018 academic year and is more excited than ever to garner new members and to continue working with our partner, the Mpoma Community HIV/AIDS Initiative (MCHI)! The 2017 GROW Team returned from a six week onsite internship in early August. During the internship, the team worked with MCHI to evaluate WASH practices in nine villages in the south central Nama sub county region. All nine of these villages have worked with GlobeMed and MCHI in order to construct boreholes to improve safe access to clean drinking water. 

In the last week of the GROW internship, in late July, all the water user committees of villages that MCHI and GlobeMed at UCLA have worked with on the WASH project, gathered at the MCHI office for a biannual WASH meeting. At this meeting, the themes of latrine covers, permanent handwashing station, sensitization of children to the importance of healthy WASH practices, the importance of fences, and community empowerment to protect a water source were addressed. Following interactive presentations on these topics, participants were given laminated illustrated posters that they could use to teach their fellow village members. 

Additionally, the GROW team worked with MCHI's partner school, Johnson Nkosi Memorial Primary School to create a comprehensive website to allow more students to learn about the school. The team also helped create student profiles for vulnerable students to increase sponsorship opportunities. 

Building upon the sanitary pad project that was started last year, this year's GROW team worked with school administration to create a plan for disposal of reusable sanitary pads. A line of communication between a medical waste company in the capital city of Kampala and the school administration has been started to plan for the first disposal of sanitary pads that will occur in the coming months. 

Some updates from the last month, on ground in Mpoma are the following:

The water user committee in the village of Lukalu is working with MCHI to create a bank account in which to keep water user fees. As Peter Wandera, the manager of MCHI said, "This is another remarkable achievement in regards to the WASH impact in the community." Additionally a newly installed borehole in the village of Kyampisi is being further deepened in order to sufficiently support the entire village with enough water. The deepening will occur in the dry season when the water level goes down. MCHI will also conduct a training session of community empowerment in the village of Mukirumba, another village that has just began using a newly installed borehole.  

This month has been an exciting one for both the Mpoma Community HIV/AIDs Initiative (MCHI) and GlobeMed at UCLA. Three students from GlobeMed at UCLA have gone to Mpoma, Uganda to evaluate their collaborative project with MCHI and will be on site until the end of July. 

In the past few weeks that the students have been on ground, they have conducted three village outreaches and have taught about water access, sanitation, and hygeine (WASH) at our partner's model school, Johnson Nkosi Memorial Primary School. 

Village outreaches were conducted in the villages of Lukalu, Waluga, and Biyuki. At these outreaches approximately 25 homes each were surveyed on a variety of WASH practices ranging from borehole maintenance to personal hygeine. These surveys allow MCHI and GlobeMed to evaluate the effectiveness of the water sources that are placed in these communitites. Without project evaluation, maximum efficiency and productivity cannot be reached. Therefore our teams are working hard to ensure that village members are maximally benefiting from their water sources and WASH education. 

The team plans to complete a total of 10 village outreaches with the MCHI team. At the conclusion of these outreaches, members from each water user committee at each village will come together at a biannual meeting to discuss the findings of the WASH surveys across each village. The biannual meeting will focus on promoting permanent handwashing stations, latrine covers, and child sensitization to hygenic practices. 

The MCHI and GlobeMed team are excited to continue project management and evaluation to continue benefiting the Mpoma Community!