Lifewater in Lockdown
Lifewater restarts in Uganda!
With the Coronavirus lockdown across East Africa, all Lifewater distributions and monitoring ceased in early March. In the light of all monitoring having been put on hold, it was expected that quite a high number of Lifewater systems will be in poor condition or non-functioning by the time things resume. Experience has taught us that effective monitoring is key to the success of our projects.
Now that some COVID-secure activities can resume, we have started to bring existing Ugandan Village Project systems back to good working order by, where necessary, distributing replacement filters and other spare parts to families, schools and health facilities. This will require around 2,400 replacement 10” filters and quite a number of other parts (e.g. taps, tubing, scourers, washers, etc.).
Funding from The Aall Foundation has enabled this to take place. The required parts are being shipped out to Uganda in three tranches. The first tranche arrived last month and our core team have transported supplies to one of the Lifewater village area hubs. The Lifewater area field workers there, along with the local AYA teams, have been re-trained for this new monitoring and repair programme.
With continued regular monitoring, the recipients of the replacement filters and parts will get up to 3 further years of drinking clean and safe drinking water. This means that some of the earliest Village Project recipients will have had clean and safe drinking water for around 7-8 years, thanks to generous funding from The Aall Foundation!
