Drink Local Drink Tap

We have nearly $450,000 worth of projects in need of urgent funding.  We need to provide these 15,000 people with manageable, sustainable water, hygiene and/or sanitation facilities. In addition to my own professional development, I want to develop my team's capacity in Uganda and fill the existing gaps in our team to improve workflows, leadership, and current bottlenecks. 

Lastly, we recently purchased our first drill and need to create the systems required to manage and operate the drill, including buying a truck to transport the drill and other materials. We need to improve the efficiency of our operations in Uganda, which can empower us in helping more people with fewer dollars. 

Improving operational efficiency, having a stronger, well-supported team with the systems and tools they need will free up my time and help me focus on building more significant partnerships and strategies. I want to be able to confidently promise high-quality, long-lasting community wells for fair prices in reasonable time frames. I hope that by building reliable partnerships, improved operational efficiency, we can reach out to more people and amplify our impact.

I founded Drink Local Drink Tap to inspire people to protect our precious water and recognize and solve the world water crisis. Growing up near 20% of the world's freshwater, I know how lucky I am compared to the 2.1 billion people living without their clean water needs met - A basic human right. Despite this, I saw my backyard water-goldmine polluted and uncared for. I had to figure out how to wake people up.

My vision is to live in a world where everyone can thrive because they have access to clean water. I saw a way to fulfill my vision through education, community engagement, and water equity work. In the equity space, we advocate locally for affordable, clean water, and in Uganda, we physically build sustainable water sources and sanitation facilities. This work takes creativity, trust, patience, leadership, and a holistic, sustainable approach.

For Drink Local Drink Tap, I dream of having a thriving educational program where we educate teachers, students, and the general public about water issues and create space for action. Globally, I want our Ugandan team to feel supported, empowered, and proud in sustainably developing rural Uganda, bringing communities out of water poverty.

The lack of safe WASH facilities worldwide are the lead cause of preventable illness and deaths and the lead cause of diarrhoeal deaths of children. Each episode of diarrhea in children contributes to malnutrition, reduced resistance to infections, and, when prolonged, impaired growth and development and school readiness and performance. In addition to that, the lack of privacy and dignity has deleterious impacts on health and safety, self-esteem, education, and well-being for women and adolescent girls. Even with progress being made, the poorest and the most marginalized are being excluded. (United Nations)

On the other hand, waterways in our own backyard are plagued by plastic pollution. Researchers have found that nearly 10,000 metric tons of plastic debris enter the North American Great Lakes every year. 

Therefore, we don't only build and monitor WASH projects in under resourced rural communities in Uganda. We also raise awareness about local and global water issues through documentary creation, events, and our holistic educational programming in schools. 

We have provided 29,796 people with clean water and 12,249 people with safe sanitation. We have reached more than 16,000 students in schools and have inspired 4,000 people to donate to our organization.

According to the UN, poor water, sanitation, and high-risk hygiene behaviors trap the poor in a vicious cycle of poor health, environmental degradation, malnutrition, reduced productivity, and loss of income. In Uganda, we are slowly yet steadily attempting to break the cycle of poverty by providing holistic WASH solutions in communities that are indeed left behind.

I realize that the impacts our actions have on our environment seem to hover in the future or are occurring most visibly in other parts of the world, not in our own backyard. Therefore, through our Wavemaker Program, we engage both students and educators in various water-related topics. It serves as a foundation-building space to understand our global water issues and inspire action. I also realize the power our stories from Uganda hold, so we share them with the school children through a carefully crafted curriculum. Putting a human face on the world water crisis – a problem that isn't easy to imagine - makes the students consider issues differently. We believe that through our Wavemaker Program, we can shape young minds and raise a generation of global emphatic water stewards and a more connected society.

We slowly, but holistically provide communities with sustainable WASH solutions. Every community we have worked with still has fully functional facilities. In the world, 80% of WASH projects fail in the first two years (UN) because of the lack of genuine community engagement, training and monitoring. 

To ensure 100% success rate we:

1. Conduct a Needs Assessment Survey to determine traditional WASH practices, needs of women/girls, and physically disabled people, and any existing gaps.

2. Conduct Hydrological Survey, to study the existing infrastructure and survey the area to ascertain space availability and soil stability for the construction. 

3. Form a WASH committee that involves community leaders and is gender balanced..

4. Sign an MoU with the partner community leaders to solidify a commitment from the leaders. 

5. Make it mandatory for Committee members to collect $200 from the community and start a WASH savings account that they can use toward maintenance.

6. Offer menstrual hygiene training to girls in the school and teach them to make reusable sanitary pads to bridge the gap between gender issues and school dropout rates

7. Continually provide WASH training.

Monitor projects starting with three to six visits in the first year and continue to monitor for more than five years.