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 !

“Ned Morgan and his team in Masindi are clearly doing a great job partnering with villagers to deliver clean water and improve sanitation and hygiene. We left with great respect for the work they are doing and a lot of confidence in their ability to keep delivering results with our donors’ funds. Seeing the difference in the water from the traditional open sources versus the water from the Busoga Trust America wells put the benefit of our work in clear focus. The Ugandans in the villages we visited welcomed us enthusiastically and were always appreciative of the leg up we’ve offered.

What sticks with me most from the visit is the professionalism and dedication of our staff, the warmth of the Ugandan people and of course the children. They seemed to be just everywhere and it was gratifying to see them drink clean water from our wells. At Kifuruta we installed a well less than 1k from the primary school which lacked access to any clean water. After we got the water flowing we broke in a few new soccer balls we had for the school. We held our own against the younger quicker Ugandans but ultimately lost the match on penalty kicks.”

The group wrapped up their Ugandan journey with four days at the Paara game lodge in Murchison Falls Park. The Park is just a few hours by car from Masindi on the north bank of the Nile river. The group saw many of Uganda’s amazing animals in their natural habitat on game drives and boat trips on the Nile. They also managed to log a few hours at the pool bar, watching the Hippos wallow in the Nile.

Here are a few of the pictures the group took during the journey.

First and foremost, mark your calendars for Busoga Trust America events in NYC on September 24th and in Fairfield County, CT on the 25th. Several of us will be recently back from a visit to Uganda and will have stories, pictures and video to share of our water development work in Masindi.

Since last updating you in January, BTA has been quietly going about its work (i.e. Robin’s team in the field has been knocking the cover off the ball, we have been remiss in keeping you all updated).

We have:
1. Hit our production targets in Africa
2. Brought on several new members of the team
3. Prepared for a visit to Masindi this August by several BTA board members and supporters
4. Worked to secure our fundraising base here in the U.S.

Here are some details:
Hit First Year Goal: Our 15th well was installed (village of Nyakabale) during the second week of April. Our goal for our first year of operation (ended March 31, 2009) was 15 wells. Masindi Director Robin Waugh, his predecessor Matt Fay and the team they built deserve plenty of accolades for battling a host of obstacles in our first year and staying on track. With an average of 500 people served by each well, this first year effort has resulted in nearly 7500 people with fresh water and access to better sanitation and hygiene. We are now working on our 19th site. We are happy with our progress but note that the job is now just 10% done. Our original baseline surveys identified a need for approximately 200 new water sources in rural Masindi. Our goal is to complete 20 new wells this year.

New Team Members: Several new team members have joined the BTA effort and some key contributors are moving on. First, many thanks to outgoing Masindi Director Robin Waugh and Treasurer Bob Colgan. They were each instrumental in BTA’s successful first year. And welcome to several new people who we expect will help take this to a new level:

Ryan Jennings is a member of the team that originally designed our website. Ryan joined the BTA Board earlier this year and has taken on an expanded role helping with our communications and fundraising efforts. Ryan’s creativity and his technology and marketing savvy are proving to be invaluable to BTA.

Ned Morgan, our newly hired Director in Masindi, has taken over from Robin Waugh. Since graduating from George Washington University in 2006, Ned has worked in international development with most of his time spend on projects in Uganda and Kenya.

Ned will be filling very large shoes when Rob heads back to Scotland next month. We all owe a great debt to Rob for his creative and tenacious approach to solving problems and keeping the program on track this past year. Congratulations Rob and welcome Ned!

Allison Miyake has recently taken over from Bob Colgan as our Treasurer. The transition has been smooth. Thanks to you both.

Emily Polet is BTA’s First Africa Intern. A Junior at Rochester College, Emily raised the funds for a three month internship in Uganda. Thus far Emily has spent her time figuring out which African-native plants best repel mosquitoes and determining which model of latrine is both sustainable and available to construct using local materials. Emily will also be working to keep the Busoga Trust America web site fresh with content from the field.

Kevin Reed: An equities trader at Raymond James in New York, Kevin will be helping out with our grant writing program.

August Trip on Track: A group of us are headed to Masindi in August to meet our field team, assess needs, review our progress to date and visit prospective villages. Our group includes Scott Hancock, John Sabino, Jeff Kaplan, JoeAnna Greenberg, Dave Wiener and Ted Huber. It’s not too late to decide to join in – just let us know.

Securing and Expanding our Fundraising Base:
Our new efforts include:
1. An expanded foundation grant writing effort
2. Online marketing
3. A school sponsorship program.

Jeff Kaplan is leading our efforts to get schools involved in supporting BTA as both a new source of funds and a way to empower kids to help those that are less fortunate. Jeff’s Harlem-based Goal after school program raised $1,700 in a series of events this spring hosted by the kids at P.S. 171 in Harlem. Read more about the event here. Also, a Girl Scout troop from Lynbrook, Long Island raised over $500 through their efforts educating their local community on the issues related to clean water in Uganda.

Let us know if you’d like to organize an effort with a local school or other organization. Jeff can show you the way.

See our web site www.busogatrustamerica.org or Ned’s Twitter feed from the field for more detail on all that is going on. You may also make a donation online to support our next project in Kifuruta Village. Thanks for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you all in September.

Best regards,

Ted Huber, Jeff Kaplan, Ryan Jennings, Andrew Pearson
BTA Founders

Ned Morgan will be taking over from Rob starting July 1. Since graduating from George Washington University in 2006, Ned has worked in international development with most of his time spend on projects in Uganda and Kenya. Congratulations Rob and welcome Ned!

In most villages we complete a well on our first attempt. This was the case in Kitanyata where we completed a 12 foot column and capped the well in late September. Kigunya was a different story where it took four tries and lots of hand holding along the way. Our first column hit bedrock after 25 feet and lacked a sufficient water flow. We hit bedrock again on our second column and began to lose support within the community as the digging efforts interfered with other local priorities. After several site visits to rally support for the effort and an aborted third well, we got it right. Our fourth column was excavated to a depth of 13 feet with the water table at 7 feet and a very good recharge rate of 3 feet every 30 minutes. The hand pump was installed and the well capped on September 27th, two and one half months after our well technicians began work on the project.

Hygiene education and sanitation work are ongoing in both of these villages. Working to improve sanitation and educate community members on hygiene are critical parts of our efforts in Masindi. Our team there is working in the villages, with schools and community groups and hosts a regular radio program to help with these efforts.

Elsewhere digging continues in Kigunya. Two shafts had to be abandoned after we struck rock at around 20 ft. The third shaft is now down 5 ft. We have two well technicians working in Kitanyata. They are now down 12 ft with a water column of 4 ft.

Our work has been suspended in Pakanyi, the 2nd village in which we couldn’t complete our efforts due to land disputes. We hope to be back there some day. In spite of the need in Pakanyi, we won’t site wells in communities that are not contributing sufficiently to the effort or seem unprepared to properly manage the new community asset. We are presently working in 5 other new communities, collecting baseline data and assessing the cultural and geologic feasibility of a new water source. We will assign these projects to donors when work has progressed further. We remain hopeful that we will achieve our target of 10 wells completed in 2008, our first year of operation.