Clean water for the Rushaga Community School

Hi. I'm Joel Dubey. Recently my wife Celia and I were travelling in Uganda. We had the opportunity to visit the Rushaga Community School in Kisoro. It was a wonderful experience. The students were very shy at first, but as I was talking to the administrator I looked over and saw my wife playing American music, showing the students her not-so-latest dance moves and taking pictures with them and showing them what they looked like on her phone. Before we knew it they had turned the tables on us and were singing Ugandan music and showing us their dance moves. It was a blast!

As we toured the school it was apparent that the administrators were doing an amazing job with the resources they had, but those resources are extremely limited. There are 260 students at this school from grades kindergarten to Senior. Since there are very few cars in the area, and the school is responsible for handling all the children from an 8-kilometer radius, many of the students (113) stay at the school full time. The rest must walk. For some it can be up to an 8 kilometer walk daily to go to school.

The facilities are "adequate" by Ugandan standards, but the most glaring thing we noticed was that they don't have fresh water. They were using a trickle of water on the ground for some of their needs and carrying in drinking water daily. Water for showers and basic hygiene is hard to come by.

Turns out that the area of Kisoro is fairly rich in ground water. Wells tend to be very successful in the area, but expensive to dig. While we were there, we asked the only local contractor in the area that could dig a well to give us a quote. We asked him to quote a well, a pump to deliver the water, separate girl’s and a boy’s storage tanks to create water pressure for showers, and all the necessary piping and labor to complete the job. The total was just over $5k US dollars.

Our goal is to raise $5k US dollars to bring fresh water to the school. It will make a huge difference in the lives of these children and improve the conditions, cleanliness and hygiene at the school. I hope you will participate in this worthwhile venture. 100% of any money collected will go towards this effort.