Two communities will have access to clean and safe water thanks to spring protection projects funded with donations in memory of two special WATSAN supporters.
Murambo low-yield spring is being constructed with donations in memory of Reverend Jonathan Watson. Jonathan joined the embryonic WATSAN Support Group in 2005, and became a Trustee when we became a Registered Charity in 2007, before resigning in 2016 due to ill health. He brought to the table first-hand experience from some years of living and teaching in Uganda. His wise counsel and encouragement were invaluable in those early years, and later as the project developed and expanded.
Construction and community engagement around Murambo spring is in progress. Local people are predominantly agriculturalists who rely heavily on coffee and banana plantations for their income. The villages are water stressed, with no tapped water, and the only sources are an open pond, or a polluted stream, resulting in constant water-related illnesses in the area.
During a community inception meeting, 41 families were engaged in the project plan, and a Project Implementation Committee was selected. The bulk of the construction is complete, and the water supply is expected to be connected imminently.
Katembagara low-yield spring was constructed with donations in memory of Dr Jenny Vaughan. Jenny was a Consultant Psychiatrist and active campaigner for justice in the medical arena. Jenny became an active supporter of WATSAN in 2011, along with her surgeon husband Matt, our FirstAid Officer on several of our Walks for Water. Jenny sadly died on Easter Sunday 2024. Her family wanted to register her enthusiasm for improving health outcomes by raising funds for WATSAN.
Katembagara spring is now serving around 42 families with an estimated population of about 195 people. Our colleagues on the ground in Uganda report back to us:
“The source was protected after a long wait while the community engaged different development partners and the district officials, but all in vain. Partly, the reason why there was failure to get support could have been the low geographical positioning of the source site, which made it hard to protect and secure its drainage. However, WATSAN engaged its experienced masons, who constructed a low-yield spring successfully with full participation of the beneficiary community.
“At the commissioning and handover of this spring, the beneficiaries were extremely happy and gave testimonies of disbelief because they had lost hope of clean water, as every other organisation had said that it was impossible to protect that source. An elderly lady, Kabaterana, who also gave her land for the construction of the spring, described it as a miracle, because she was used to taking water that was full of frogs’ eggs for the 60 years since she got married and settled in the area.”
If you’d like to create a fundraising page for WATSAN in memory of a loved one, you can do so on Stewardship – follow our how-to guide to set it up.
WATSAN Uganda 