WATSAN’s current big target project is Kihihi Hill, where local families and school children are currently struggling to survive and thrive with a pitiful and and intermittent water supply, and dilapidated and squalid toilet facilities.
Kihihi Hill is situated in the north of the WATSAN area, outside the small town of Kihihi, which has a total population of some 15,000. There is abject poverty in and close to the Rift Valley due to relatively dry conditions and poor soil. The plight of this area has been highlighted recently by severe drought and crop failure, which seriously affected the area. There are refugees from the Congo in refugee camps near the town.
The project addresses water supply and sanitation needs at the school of over 1,000 boys and girls, a small nursery school and a church. The total number of direct beneficiaries of 1,165 people includes staff and a small local community.
The town is served by an intermittent gravity flow water supply scheme, which extends even more intermittently to Kihihi Hill, and two springs from which townspeople must draw water when the gravity taps fail or are subject to rota cuts. Children at the school generally draw water from two small rainwater catchment tanks, but must often walk one kilometre to a town spring, and join queues of people collecting water there.
The sanitation facilities at the school are pitifully inadequate, with a ratio of one latrine stance to 64 girls, and one to 49 for boys. There are only two bath shelters, one for boys and one for girls. Both are dilapidated and unhygienic.
The WATSAN project includes education and training in a wide range of health and personal hygiene related topics, together with the improvement of sanitation facilities, provision of hand washing facilities, and promotion of better hygiene across the community. A fuller specification can be found on our planned projects page.
The majority of the funds required for this project have now been raised:
- Of the total cost of the project of £35,000, we have contributions promised by the Kihihi community of £4,000.
- Our partners in Uganda have recently raised over £4,500 for the project by organising their own local Walk for Water event in Kihihi.
- Including some seed funding we have already provided, this leaves us with a current shortfall of around £10,000.
- A brief reminder on the way WATSAN’s finances work can be found here.
Hence we are appealing generally to our supporters to help with the funding shortfall that we face for Kihihi Hill, as we aim to fund the remainder of this project. Could you help us to finish this project and achieve a decisive improvement to health and quality of life for the pupils, staff and community in Kihihi Hill?
WATSAN Uganda 