Project Background
In countries like Uganda, education is one of the only ways to escape poverty. This makes the construction of schools in rural areas like Iyolwa very important and caused us to work together with our project partner, pater Thomas Chozhihara Varghese. He and his organisation FOSTER are constructing a secondary school with an infirmary and an orphanage.
Due to the lack of a secondary school in the area, construction was started in 2015. Sanitation and water supply are two of the most mandatory needs for a school. Especially because around 80 percent of the illnesses in developing countries are connected to the lack of clean drinking water and inadequate sanitary facilities. With our engineering knowledge and experience from past projects, such as a drinking water plant and dry toilets, we can contribute to improving the situation in Iyolwa.
In the first phase of the project, we began with the construction of a sanitation building, as well as with installing the urine-diverting dry toilets. They work by separating urine from faeces. The faeces are then collected and dried to kill off all germs and can later be used as organic fertilizer.
In a second subproject water saving showers were installed which are fed by rainwater collected from the rooftop. The water supplies the whole sanitation complex consisting of the showers, tabs and a water purification system to offer clean drinking water. The construction was performed with the help of local workers.
In a third subproject, started in 2017, two underground cisterns with a combined capacity of 80,000 litres and a water purification system were built to provide even more drinking water. The cisterns are filled with the rainwater from the nearby school roof.
We aim to finalise the project ‘Iyolwa – Water and Sanitations’ in 2018 and start to look for a new project in Uganda.