BTA competed 20 wells in our fiscal year ended March 31 – on time and on budget.
Challenges during the March quarter included several failed attempts to dig a well in the village of Kyakakunguru, the need to abandon one attempt in the village of Mboria II (our second attempt here was successful) and a delayed shipment of pumps from our UK supplier. Though the geology is generally very favorable in Masindi for shallow hand dug wells, in Kyakakunguru we repeatedly struck rock before we were able to get sufficiently deep into the water table for a reliable year round well. We’ve suspended efforts there for now but are working to find another solutions for people in this village.
Our team is off to a fast start for fiscal 2011, so far completing 4 village based projects. We are targeting 20 village based projects and 4 school based projects for the year. The school based programs are new to us and were designed by our team in Masindi in response to a pressing need they identified Masindi area primary schools, as most schools lack a reliable source of clean water and adequate sanitation facilities. While BTA has made good progress with hygiene education in project villages, kids are easier to teach than adults, and our assessment is that working within the schools is optimal, and will positively impact our hygiene education work. Our primary school projects will provide fresh water year round from 20,000 liter roof water catchment tanks, will provide new single sex sanitation facilities for girls and boys and will include comprehensive hygiene education. We’ve budged $10,000 for each of these projects. The new water tank and latrines were completed at the Mboria primary school on June 25 and our team is now moving into the hygiene education phase of the program
BTA will spend $160,000 during our F2011 to complete our 24 projects, up from the $120,000 we raised and spent in the field in F2010. We’re a little more than halfway to securing the funds we need for F2011. In addition to continued support from the Deerfield Foundation, we’ve added Citizen’s Effect as fund raising partners and are expanding our grant writing program. Check out these links to two projects that Citizen Effect has taken on:

Citizen Effect Wedding Registry Project

Citizen Effect Half Marathon Project

The range of fundraising efforts we’re seeing crop up is encouraging – from wedding registries to a school based carwash to sponsorship for a half marathon there are a lot of creative ways to get involved. – contact us for help getting your own project off the ground.
Congratulations to Ned Morgan and our team in Masindi for another successful year’s work !