(2022) St. Augustine Mixed Primary school is located in Kalungu Parish, in Uganda, East Africa. It was started by the Catholic Church in 1980 to give opportunity to vulnerable children especially street children to have education. St. Augustine Primary school, Kalungu is for both girls and boys. Parents of these children are financially poor as the majority of the people are engaged in subsistence farming, and now the situation has been worsened by COVID 19. It is for this reason Fr. Joseph Kasangaki, in a proposal dated June 13th, 2022, has humbly requested ROTA for financial support to be able to buy tanks for harvesting water and be able to follow sanitation requirements from ministry of education. Presently the School caters for a total number of 712 children: 401girls and 311 boys as well as a Staff of 28 people. At its quarterly board meeting in July 2022, ROTA discussed several requests for assistance and recommended that priority be given to those projects which deal with the most basic necessities of water and sanitation. The St. Augustine school request was thus at the top of the project listing waiting upon the blessings of funding.
St. Augustine Mixed Primary School is situated in an area where access to water especially during the long dry season is a very big problem. Despite the fact of that this area receives heavy rainfall, students and hired workers fetch water from distant natural reservoirs of about 1Km which is expensive for the school and time consuming. This water secured from natural water reservoirs is contaminated with water-borne Diseases such as Cholera, Typhoid and children end up falling sick. The water demand in the area is currently high. All the water needed cannot be collected from the present water sources. This has created an acute water problem for children, staff, and nearby local communities. The need for water has increased with the outbreak of Covid 19 pandemic. The school is required to have enough and clean water for proper sanitation to remain open and operating.
The school already has six big classrooms from where enough clean water can be harvested, unfortunately the parents are low income earners and so much affected by COVID 19 lock down cannot raise funds to buys tanks.
The tangible goal of the Project is to harvest water from the available classroom buildings, store and supply rainwater to for improvement of hygiene and sanitation of the children, staff and the local community.
The local Community is already mobilized to participate in the establishment of this project. Parents shall contribute some materials like bricks, water, and transport to be used in the construction of where to place the tanks.
As funding is provided, water tanks shall be bought each with capacity of 10,000 Liters. The school shall purchase all necessary project materials: gutters, cement, river sand, bricks, water collection pipes, water collection boxes etc. The school will construct strong water tank bases for the installation of the water tanks. Gutters will be fixed on the buildings and they will be connected to the water tanks.
A twofold blessing came this past July. ROTA received a wonderful financial gift from the students of East Aurora Middle School after a presentation about ROTA and our water projects. We also received word that we were named, for the first time, as a beneficiary among others, in a will of a Buffalo Priest who had passed. These blessings along with other funds from our generous donors allowed us to proceed with the funding of this most needed water resource project.
Students and their teacher assist in rolling the empty water tanks to their proper resting places near buildings where a system of water collection gutters and pipes will fill them during the seasonal wet seasons. Their capacity should guarantee enough water for the whole dry season.
Projects like these are only possible through the generous gifts of our many benefactors. Thank You for your support.