Giving Update: Ulagai Community, Aduda Spring

Ulagai Village has embraced the protection of Aduda Spring wholeheartedly since its installation last year. The water is of great help to the community, and people no longer suffer new cases of waterborne diseases. Traders here reported their profits increased as they can now sell their goods for longer hours at Ulagai market.

This is because parents can now send their children very comfortably to get water from the spring without the fear that they might fetch dirty water or get home late. The spring point is safe, secure and neat. Thus, parents have taken advantage of the safe and easily accessible water to send their children instead of themselves and use the saved time to make extra cash in their small businesses.

The project has thus improved their lives socially and economically, and this explains why their living standards have improved. Chair of the water committee John Madara shared how the protection of Aduda Spring has changed his community over the last year.

"The process of fetching water from Aduda spring is very organized, and the current discharge is good. Diarrheal diseases have reduced, meaning that the community is now able to raise a new crop: [a new] generation that is less affected by those diseases," he said.

"This means that the village is becoming healthy, productive, and disease-free."

William Okello (left) and John Madara (right)

John explained that while the community has faced challenges maintaining their dried-pole fence around the spring box to protect it from animals and humans alike, the water committee has been resilient and recently agreed to plant a live thorny fence to solve the challenge and safeguard the spring box. In addition to that, they plan to train the new spring users on how to safeguard the spring just the way they were also taught last year by our training officers, since new people come to the spring with the dry season and when they move to the area.

17-year-old William Okello shared how this project has affected not just his life in the village, but his experience in school as well.

"The training helped [us] to appreciate the value of handwashing at critical times. I am now a hygiene and sanitation champion in my school at Ulagai," he said.

"The project has helped many families to enjoy safe, sound and reliable sanitation facilities, [my] family is one of those that got [sanitation platforms] that were cast and installed during [the] implementation period. Those homes that did not have latrines have also tried and constructed them and this has helped in doing away with open defecation from the village."

Field Officer Erick Wagaka with William and John