COVID provided an opportunity to rethink WATSAN’s flagship fundraising event in 2021. Plan to be with us in June 2022!

Every two years since 2011, WATSAN Walks for Water have been key fundraising opportunities, raising vital funds for our projects in Uganda. In 2021, due to COVID restrictions and uncertainties, it was not possible to organise a single weekend gathering, as on the previous five occasions. However, the alternative of local walks held across England resulted in both a record number of participants and our best result ever of £28,212 for the Bwanga Hill project, which is now under construction and due for substantial completion by March 2022.

The trustees have therefore been presented with something of a conundrum. The local walks were popular and successful, thanks to our trustees and supporters, who worked so hard for us to achieve safe and successful outcomes. On the other hand we know that gathering everyone together occasionally has also produced enjoyable and worthwhile experiences.

We hope we have come up with an integrated plan, which relies once again on the willingness of trustees and supporters being prepared to organise local walks. Trustee Graham Piper and his wife Philippa are willing to offer a repeat of the popular South Downs Walk in June 2022. We would be delighted if others may be willing/wish to follow suit in 2022 and/or later years, and to organise their own local walks.

But this approach leaves us without any face-to-face contact with and between our supporters as a whole. To remedy this we are planning an afternoon gathering to which all our regular supporters will receive a personal invitation in due course. Meanwhile, please save the date of May 21st 2022! More details will follow, and we would hope to have a Ugandan presence, at least on screen.

In the meantime, we would be delighted to hear from previous organisers and new recruits who would be willing and able to organise a local walk on a date or dates in June 2022. Please contact Ian and Ellie.

WATSAN supporter Mandy McIntosh runs a fair trade shop in Ashby de la Zouch and online. To mark World Toilet Day on 19th November, she is donating 10% of her takings to WATSAN takings from 15th to 30th November.

The offer will include both sales from Mandy’s bricks and mortar shop, and her online shop www.fair2all.net, where you can buy upcycled and fair trade gifts, homewares, accessories and cards.

In 2017 Mandy was part of a team who went to South West Uganda and participated in a WATSAN project working with the local community to provide latrines in their school. Once the latrine block for older girls was completed, over 60 girls returned to education.

WATSAN’s trustees would like to thank Mandy very much for this generous contribution to WATSAN – and of course encourage other supporters to do their Christmas shopping on the Fair2All website!

Visit the Fair2All website

Many of our supporters will know from past posts of the problems faced by our Ugandan Team with the elderly and erratic pick-up truck, which used to transport them and their kit to often remote villages, over what our friends over there describe as the “dancing roads”. This aptly describes the bone-shaking effect of travelling in rural South-West Uganda, where at times one wishes for a crash helmet as you jerk up and down, almost hitting the car roof!

Now much has changed! Sir John, who died from complications of Covid-19 on April 18, 2020, aged 88, most thoughtfully left WATSAN a wonderful legacy, and his wife Sheila thought it would be very appropriate to use this gift to purchase a brand new vehicle for WATSAN.

The new Toyota Hilux truck comes with a three-year warranty. Due to the Covid-19 lockdown in Uganda the transaction took some time to achieve, involving several 500-mile round trips to the capital, Kampala, before Canon Eric was able to take delivery. But what a wonderfully thoughtful gift by which we may all celebrate John’s amazing achievements and his association with WATSAN.

Canon Eric writes, “The acquired vehicle is operating very well, using relatively less fuel. We are certainly achieving more progress regarding water, sanitation and health projects under implementation like Bwanga Hill and Ruheza gravity flow scheme because of this reliable transport.”

As COP 26 gets underway, we remember John particularly as one of the very first scientists to begin investigations about the cause and implications of climate change, way back in the late 1950s and early 60s. He outlined his research in his 2013 autobiography In the Eye of the Storm (where WATSAN also gets an honourable mention on page 259), and has recently been honoured by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), of which he was Co-Chair.

Find out more about the projects John’s legacy will facilitate

There’s a new way to contact all of the trustees and to find us online…

The eagle-eyed amongst our supporters will have noticed that WATSAN has a refreshed logo – something of an evolution rather than a revolution, bringing our visual identity up to date whilst, we hope, retaining the spirit of the classic logo, which was designed by our friends in Uganda.

We wanted to make sure everyone was also aware that we have now retired our previous website address (nkkdwatsan-uganda.com, which is no longer available) in favour of the much simpler watsanuganda.org. Additionally and most importantly, you can now contact the whole trustee team at hello@watsanuganda.org.

We have also produced a new information leaflet about what WATSAN does and our impact, which can be found here. If our supporters would like printed copies of these for their own fundraising or events, please do let us know!

Due to COVID restrictions, 15 different local walks were held across England, bringing in a record number of participants and raising £28,212 for WATSAN.

Our first walker and youngest participant was Amber Bushell (pictured), aged just 7, who completed her accompanied ascent of Coniston Old Man (2633 ft.) to mark her birthday. All the walkers completed personal challenges, whatever the length of their walk, to remember the difficulties that men, women and children face each day in Uganda on their walks to collect water.

On the evening of 19th June, we held a short celebration of all the walks on Zoom, after many walkers had completed their challenge that day. It was a chance to come together to hear how the walks had gone, discover more about the target project at Bwanga, and find out roughly how much we had raised collectively. A recording of this event can be found below.

Well done everyone, particularly to the hard-working organisers of each event, and our thanks to each and every walker and donor, great and small, for such an amazing result! Funds will be directed towards WATSAN’s project at Bwanga Hill, which will now proceed, and £10,000 has already been sent out to Uganda. More will follow in October. The educational components are likely to be delayed by the ongoing Covid-19 lockdown there, which we expect to last at least until September.

A further sum of £2,300 has been sent during the third quarter of the year to cover ‘furlough’ payments to the software team, who cannot work at present as no more than six people are allowed to gather together; safety measures for the team such as hand sanitiser and face masks; and support for those in the team suffering from Covid, or isolating as a result of contact with the disease. Field Director Eric Baingana tells us that prices have risen astronomically since the pandemic took a hold, not only for basic medicines such as paracetamol but also for fruit and vegetables and other necessities.

The Ugandan team is thrilled with the results of the various walks and send their heartfelt thanks to the walk organisers and to each and every participant.

Find out more about Bwanga