Welcome to our 2019 Community Impact Report.
This is what your support looks like in action.

Dear WaterSchool Friends,

As COVID-19 sweeps the globe and brings our communities and economies to a stand-still, one of the refrains we continue to hear is astonishingly simple: wash your hands. As we’ve all experienced in the past few months, when health is compromised because of bacteria and viruses, education systems shutter, economies are stalled, and the well-being of entire nations hang in the balance.

At its core, the coronavirus epidemic has reminded me of how essential clean water and basic sanitation and hygiene practices are. These are the simple yet transformative tools that protect us all and enable us to be healthy and flourish -- regardless of where we live.

For years, WaterSchool has known this truth and focused all of our resources and expertise on simple, replicable solutions. These solutions support the most vulnerable Ugandans in accessing clean water and basic sanitation and hygiene practices that are foundational to good health. Something as simple as helping a mom build a tippy-tap hand washing station so she doesn’t get sick and miss work changes the way communities flourish and economies thrive.

Your support over the past year has been vital - thank you for standing with us. As you read this report, I hope you see the significant impact you’ve made in people’s lives in Uganda and how you have invested in the long-term health and wellbeing of families and communities.

With hope for the future,

Richard Lau
Executive Director, WaterSchool

 When it comes to good health, nothing is more essential than clean water. A lack of clean water increases the rate of transmission of waterborne diseases, keeps children out of school while they’re sick, and stifles the local economy as parents spend precious resources on doctors and medication.

In 2019, you helped us bring clean water to thousands through two simple methods:

One of the leading causes of childhood death in Uganda is the result of limited access to basic sanitation facilities. Diseases like cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, worms and diarrhea are easily spread when there is a lack of sanitation. These diseases can cripple a community’s economy, limit the time children can spend in school, and ultimately kill the youngest and most vulnerable community members.

Thankfully, this suffering is all preventable. Implementing simple latrines with SaTo Pans and tight fitting hole covers eliminates open defecation and protects people from fecal-based illnesses that are easily spread by flies and other bugs landing on feces and then moving to kitchens, food, clothes and more. In 2017, we started working with households on sanitation practices. Reported cases of dysentery and severe diarrhea have dropped by almost 50% since SaTo Pans and latrine covers were introduced.

The SaTo Pan name is derived from the phrase “Safe Toilet” and are designed to close off insects or other hosts’ access to feces - thus limiting their ability to communicate these diseases.The SaTo Pan flap is like a trap door -- the weight of a cup or bucket of water “flushing” the waste down opens the trap door to let it through into the latrine pit, but then the SaTo Pan’s counterweight keeps the SaTo Pan flap closed at all other times. The plastic material is also easy to clean, ensuring any residual waste is “flushed” down the SaTo Pan.

Over the past few years, we’ve also started certifying villages as “Open Defecation Free.” This certification demands a very strict set of protocols and audits by various levels of government. Very few organizations have the skills to support communities to achieve these certifications. In 2018 when we began this certification process, only 12 communities qualified. In 2019, 64 communities were successfully certified.

Learn more about SaTo Pans - the revolutionary “Safe Toilet” and how they are helping to safe lives and keep families safe.

“Wash your hands!” How often have you heard that in the past few months?

Probably too many times to count. For many of us, a simple reminder is all we need. But for people in remote parts of Uganda, hand washing requires infrastructure that is not common in the average household. The Ugandan Ministry of Health reported that almost 60% of Ugandans do not wash their hands with soap -- ultimately this leads to the quick transmission of diseases like dysentery, cholera and diarrhea. With your support, in 2019, we were able to teach over 100,000 people in Uganda about the benefits of washing their hands and supported the construction of at least one tippy-tap hand washing station in every home, school and clinic, we trained. We also built 4,062 efficient, energy saving cooking stoves. These burn much less wood, save trees, and vent smoke outside the kitchen hut, greatly reducing lung disease for women.

Without the proper supplies or private latrines to manage their periods, many girls in Uganda miss up to eight days of school each school term when they are going through menstruation. This regular absenteeism is one of the biggest contributing factors to girls dropping out of schools. Only 22% of girls are enrolled in secondary education compared with 91% enrolled in primary schools.

In 2019, we focused many of our resources on trying to address this issue.

Here’s what we were able to accomplish with your support:

• 712 girls were trained at 11 schools in how to make reusable pads

• 6 menstrual hygiene rooms were built and supplied with pads, clean underwear, a spare school uniform and basic painkillers, to give girls what they need to manage their periods safely and privately.

• We greatly lowered the drop-out rate among girls at our partner schools.

We know that for every year a girl spends in school, she raises her family income by up to 20%. Increased income often equates to increased health, opportunity and long-term prosperity for the entire family. Education changes everything and we are grateful for your support in these projects.

Learn more about our work with women and girls.

With 94% of your donations going directly to our field work in Uganda, you can rest assured that your donations are getting to those who need it the most. Here’s how your generous support was put to work this past year to make sure that our team could support families across Uganda.

Program expenses: $1,233,301 (94%); administrative + audit costs: $61,197 (5%); fundraising costs $11,828 (1%).
These statements are in Canadian dollars and reflect a surplus of $77,375 carried forward to 2020. If you have questions about our financials or how we ensure that your generous support has maximum impact, please reach out to us at hello@waterschool.com.

Thank you for your compassion + generosity!

In late March, the government of Uganda implemented a wide-scale lockdown in the country. While our office team has been sequestered in Kampala, our field team has been seconded to local governments to support them in awareness-building efforts in rural communities. Because of their experience in the field and expertise in WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene), our team is bravely going into communities to tell people about COVID-19, the symptoms, and how to prevent contracting and spreading the virus.

Using megaphones, radio spots, flyers, and more, the team is hard at work spreading messages about hand washing, social distancing, and quarantining to Uganda’s most vulnerable communities. They are also distributing hand soap to households and health centres, and are quickly building as many tippy-tap hand washing stations as they can for those who do not have them yet.

Though it is a time of great uncertainty, we are proud to say that the WaterSchool team is doing all that we can to keep Ugandans safe and healthy during this time.

Thank you for partnering with us to improve the lives of thousands of people in Uganda this year. We are deeply grateful for your continued compassion and interest in being a part of this global community.

To show your support for Uganda’s COVID-19 Relief efforts give now.