Teams4U runs Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) projects in Uganda and Sierra Leone.
Preventable diseases like diarrhoea make up over 70% of illnesses in Uganda. And in the Kumi district of Uganda, around 6 in 10 schoolchildren will have an instance of diarrhoea that month, which is a lot of upset children and lost days of education. This does not have to be the case.
how can you HELP?
Ordinary people can make a big difference.
Schools receive water tanks, handwashing facilities, more hygienic toilets, and handwashing education. Schoolchildren learn the importance of handwashing after going to the toilet, touching animals, and before eating. They learn how to construct a simple ‘Tippy Tap’ at home using sticks and a jerry can so they can wash their hands at home. After WASH programmes in school, we see a 25% drop in school absence due to diarrhoea.
It costs just £450 to run this programme in a school of 900 pupils.
Teams4U Uganda runs Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programmes in schools and health centres.
To date, we have been able to provide 77 out of 91 government-funded primary schools in Kumi, Uganda, with handwashing platforms. Each of these schools commits to a 6-12 month educational and monitoring program that mentors staff in looking after the new equipment and teaching pupils about the importance of good hygiene practice. Schools with this equipment have recorded 98% of their pupils routinely washing their hands after visiting the latrine, safeguarding the health and wellbeing of over 40,000 children.
Health Centre Sanitation
In health centres, we drill for water so that health centres can have running water inside. This helps keep health centres clean, allows doctors and nurses to work much more efficiently and keeps the all-important infection transmission down. Now, many health centres have healthier patients and staff thanks to running water.
T4U Sierra Leone
T4U Sierra Leone has contacts with many villages that need access to water and basic sanitation but cannot receive support from the government to achieve this. Villages approach T4U Sierra Leone, who assess need then provide funding for the villages to buy materials and install wells and latrines. The villages receive a small ongoing amount of funds to maintain the infrastructure.
Investing in Sanitation
Wells and latrines reduce the spread of diseases, increasing the health of communities, which in turn hugely impacts educational attainment, productivity at work and nutrition levels. Having a water source in the villages not only improves quality of life and saves time, it also reduces musculoskeletal disorders from carrying water long distances. These projects impact hundreds of lives for generations to come.