Water, our life! A group of high school students lead a community project on water, health, and the environment in Kampala, Uganda.

• Author: Kwagala, Joan Nassiwa

a team of girls from Gayaza High School in Kampala, Uganda, sat down to discuss water issues within the school and the surrounding communities with the deputy head teacher, Mr. Ddungu Ronald.

Our teacher invited us to participate in a global environmental programme and introduced us to GreenContributor, an organization based in Canada that connects schools worldwide and offers students opportunities to become involved in collaborative environmental programmes. Through their connections, we collaborated with two other schools in Uganda--the Parvatiben Muljibhai Madhvani (PMM) Girls' School in Jinja and the St. Peter's Secondary School in Nkokonjeru.

We e-mailed teachers and students, inviting them to join an online classroom to discuss water scarcity in their communities. We had forty participants, including an active member from PMM, Amina Sharifa, whose creativity contributed much to the discussion through her researched examples and similar situations in different countries.

In the second and third week, we discussed water availability and its usage in and out of the school, and conducted a water audit. We calculated the average amount used in our school, which pumps water from a bore well. Unfortunately, the students in my school waste water without regard for the many people who barely have a drop. It was important that we undertook this activity to reflect on this problem.

In the fourth week, the team visited the nearby community well. It was disheartening to see people fetching dirty water from the well situated near toilets and contaminated with algae. A good number of the children interviewed said they suffered from typhoid, and the adults told us that treatment was expensive, costing at least 90,000 Uganda Shillings, or forty-five dollars.

Later on, in a pilot project at a primary school in our neighbourhood, we researched water scarcity, including a sensitization programme, hoping to change the attitudes of adults and children. GreenContributor supported us with a water programme curriculum and a water treatment manual from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (SODIS). The SODIS method treats drinking water with sunlight and the use of polyethylene terephthalate bottles, also known commonly as PET. The Uganda Health Marketing Group supported us by introducing the use of the Aquasafe tablet to treat water and donated eleven water tanks. Today, there is a water champion at every water...