Water Access, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) Project

The past few months have shown significant growth for the Water Access, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH)  project that GlobeMed at UCLA and Mpoma Community HIV/AIDS Initiative (MCHI) have been working on for the past few years.

Every year MCHI conducts biannual outreaches to the villages in which boreholes have been installed throughout the Nama Sub County of south central Uganda. Despite heavy rains six outreaches have been conducted in the past two months in the villages of Lukalu, Namawojollo, Katoogo, Waluga, and Kyampisi. The Kyampisi borehole which was installed a little less than one year ago was not functioning to its full capacity. For this reason, the borehole is currently being deepened in order to pump more water to support the community.  

Another significant advancement of the WASH project has been the installation of a water filtration system at the Johnson Nkosi Memorial Primary School (JNMPS), MCHI’s partner school. This filtration system will allow students to access clean and safe water more efficiently, thus allowing them to focus on their education and not on uncertainties regarding safe water. The borehole was installed in the end of February and unfortunately suffered from a minor malfunction recently. It is currently being fixed, but in the meantime the borehole has been pumping well and is supporting the school’s needs.

MCHI leaders recently attended a non-governmental organization forum held by the county government to voice concerns regarding WASH needs in the area, based on biannual surveys of villages in the community. MCHI strongly advocated for changing the governmental standard for walking distance to a borehole from one kilometer to a shorter distance to allow communities to safely and effectively access clean water. The leaders of MCHI also voiced concerns about the government needing more financial supporters as MCHI alone cannot meet the needs of the many water stressed areas of the Nama Sub County.

As a staple component of our partnership, three interns from our UCLA chapter will be traveling to our partner site in June, as a part of the GROW internship, to work with our grassroots partner to evaluate the project’s progress and needs collaboratively. In preparation for this internship they have been working with a professor in the Society and Genetics department at UCLA to prepare a research project that will evaluate the progress of the project systematically. In addition to the GROW team being on site in June, a team of teachers from Kentucky will also be working with the teachers at JNMPS. The team of teachers from Kentucky is currently raising funds to renovate the boys and girls dorms at the school.

Our UCLA GlobeMed chapter recently instituted a new executive board, which will be fully trained by mid-May. Next week, members of the UCLA chapter will be participating in a Skype call to MCHI in order to further build the relationship between our organizations that mutually aspire to strengthen the WASH project in the Nama Sub County.