Category: News

Bulubandi Primary School is one of the largest schools in eastern Uganda. With over 2,000 students, spanning grades 1 through 7, the head teacher, Naigaga Madinga well understands the magnitude of her job.

“Running a school this size requires infrastructure and resources. As you can see, everything we need here is in large numbers”, says Madinga. “I have been teaching at this school for 14 years and in all of that time, we have never had a reliable and continuous source of clean water.”

She goes on to explain that the large government-funded school had partial access to two water sources, but both were unreliable.

One was a community borehole that was always crowded. Here the women began lining up early in the morning, with their jerry cans marking their location in line. Because they needed this water for their daily domestic workload of cooking, washing clothes, cleaning, and bathing children, they were not interested in the students cutting in their line to get a drink from the already-crowded water point. And tensions would brew.

The second option was piped municipal water. But this was not a sustainable solution. For one, the piped-water supply only worked intermittently. According to Mukiza, the water would dry up for weeks at a time. And in addition to that, paying for municipal water was completely unaffordable for a school the size of Bulubandi.

The lack of water brought many challenges to the large school. But the loudest complaint came from the boy students. They were not allowed to play sports!

Like boys throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the students at Bulubandi love to play soccer. It was not uncommon to have nearly 1000 children running after a ball during recess. And, in the Ugandan heat, that made for a lot of thirsty kids.

The administration legitimately feared that the students could pass out from dehydration.

According to Muhondo Eric, the senior male teacher at the school, “Nobody at the school wanted to stop the children from having fun, but we had to limit how much they could play and sweat because of water rationing.”

Now that DROP has drilled and we have a permanent water solution, we no longer have to worry about rationing. The students are back to playing sports and tensions have settled. In addition, their academic performance and daily attendance also seem to be improving.

According to Madinga, we are grateful for this new water source for many reasons. For one, it gives the school a clean, consistent and reliable water supply. That solved many very problems for the school. And there is no need to ration water, or fun, anymore.

From Unsafe Water to a Better Solution

Located in the Pader district of northern Uganda, the Angole Health Center II used to struggle to provide basic care to its patients. The reason was a lack of clean water. Located near a trading center, the health center serves both as a place of work and a home for the medical professionals who work there. However, its lack of a clean water source made it difficult for staff to effectively care for patients.  

Before the well

Awor Margaret, a midwife at the health center, explained that the staff used to fetch water from a borehole at a nearby primary school, which was also used by the local community. This meant that medical staff had to leave patients waiting while they went to collect water. The water generally lasted until the afternoon, allowing staff to see around 50 patients per day. But if they were too tired to fetch more water, they had to turn patients away and ask them to come back the next day.

In times of crisis, such as when the borehole broke down, the nearest water source was an open stream two kilometers away. Oyella Ketty, a nurse at the health center, remembers the risks and ramifications of healthcare workers leaving patients waiting while they walked for water.

The water from the stream was not safe to drink, as Awor Margaret recalls seeing organisms swimming in it. But with no other options, the medical staff had to give it to patients for drinking and swallowing tablets.

The new well

Thanks to a new well, however, the Angole Health Center II now has access to all the clean water it needs for drinking, hand washing, treating sick children, and cleaning the facility. In fact, the Ministry of Health now requires that all healthcare facilities in Uganda be cleaned twice per day in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Without the new well, meeting this requirement would have been impossible.

Oyella Ketty looks at the people getting water from the new well and her face lights up. She explains that the borehole provides all the water the community needs and that the staff is now able to care for all of their patients without fear of running out of water.

The new well has been a game-changer for the Angole Health Center II and the local community. No longer do the medical staff have to worry about leaving patients waiting while they fetch water, or about giving their patients unsafe water to drink. Now, they are able to focus on providing the best possible care to their patients and serving the community to the best of their ability.

But the struggles of the Angole Health Center II are not unique. Across Uganda, many communities face challenges when it comes to access to clean water. This is a problem that disproportionately affects women and children, who are often responsible for collecting water for their families.

The efforts of organizations like Drop in the Bucket are critical in addressing this issue and improving the lives of communities in Uganda and beyond. By working to provide access to clean water, these organizations are helping to improve health, education, and economic opportunities for people in need.

The story of the Angole Health Center II is a testament to the transformative power of clean water and the positive impact it can have on communities. It is a reminder of the importance of supporting efforts to bring clean water to those who need it most.

Today is World Refugee Day. Drop in the Bucket’s team spent the day in the Palabek refugee settlement in Uganda where we are working to provide clean water to the 31,000 South Sudanese who have fled their homeland because of famine and conflict. More than three million people, or a third of South Sudan’s population, have fled their homes, creating Africa’s biggest refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide. These refugees have been given a small plot of land in Uganda and are now attempting to start over in their new country.

This morning as we drove out to the settlement to do our work, the reality of being a refugee became very personal. A young South Sudanese student who is being sponsored to attend high school in Uganda is interning with the DROP drilling team for this summer.  His name is John Lual Deng and he is studying Agriculture at Kampala University. Deng grew up in a refugee camp in Kenya during the war.  But because of the opportunity he has been given to attend school, he is excelling academically.

Deng’s dream is to teach his people about farming.  He believes that South Sudan has vast potential to grow food and should never experience death because of famine! His dream is for his children to know a life without war and suffering, a place where people live peacefully and abundantly.  His face lights up when he talks about more efficient methods of irrigation and organic fertilizers. His dreams may be big but they are attainable and he is prepared to work for them.

Today Deng is working to provide clean water to the refugee camp. He believes in DROPs mission to provide clean water to these people as they take the first steps toward building their new lives.  They may have only a few possessions but what they do have is hope…. hope for a new beginning…. a land where their children can live without fear….. and a place where they can get an education and thrive.

On this International Refugee Day, as we look around at the Palabek refugee settlement, we do not see the faces of sad desperate people. We see a bit of optimism and a glimmer of a new beginning. We see vast human potential!

Please help us make this possible

Award winning music video director Nathan Karma Cox recently came out to Uganda to check out our work firsthand. He put together this video with graphics from our friend Rodrigo Gava.

The music is a remix of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song “Under the Earth” that they were kind enough to give us to use in the video. Special thanks to Karen, Nick and Brian from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tony and Laura from Ciulla Management, Joe Betts from BMG and everyone from UMG for making this happen and being so supportive.

Also special thanks to Nathan Cox, Rodrigo Gava and of course Nick Launay and Ming Vauze for their amazing remix.

We hope you enjoy the video and if you do please consider sharing it on your social media channels.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has donated to our fundraising campaign to provide clean water and toilets at the Madera School for the Blind in Uganda. This is the largest project we have ever taken on for a single school and it is considerably more expensive than anything we have done in the past, but it is also one of the projects we are most proud of.



Here are some photos that show the construction that is coming along nicely. Both sets of septics are now finished and both sets of toilets are almost done. In the photos you can see a sink and the boys urinal that are close to being finished. We still have to finish the showers and we still need to raise some money for the solar pump. If you are interested in making a donation please click here
Thank you so much for making this all possible with your amazing generosity and support.

Help Shine a New Light for Blind Children in Uganda
Every child deserves a clean and safe place to learn and play. Help us build a proper sanitation facility for the only School for the Blind in Uganda.
For many parents in Uganda, just taking care of basic needs for themselves and their children can be challenging. Taking care of a blind child with special needs is just not possible for many families.
The St. Francis Primary School for the Blind fulfills those needs. Since 1955, it has been the only school in all of Uganda dedicated to educating visually impaired children.
One of the biggest problems facing the school is sanitation. The school’s only toilet is a single dirty pit latrine that would be intolerable even for children with sight. Moreover, this single toilet is currently shared among the boys and girls. The school desperately needs better and separate toilets.
Drop In The Bucket is a nonprofit organization that has been building wells and sanitation systems in schools throughout Africa. We have reconfigured the design of our toilet specifically for these children. The total cost of the project will be $80,000.
If you could imagine what your day would be like without a toilet, please consider making a donation. Just a $20 donation will help provide a cleaner place for these kids to thrive.

Winnie Ayute (15 years), Agama Primary School:

I’m in Primary Six and our school is one of the largest schools in the district. There are 790 pupils including 342 girls. Before Drop in the Bucket drilled a well on the school compound, nearest source of water was a swamp at the Agule village which is about two kilometers away. We used to fetch water, which meant carrying 20-litre jerry cans on our heads. We hated the task because it is very far to walk and we had to walk through bushes. Because the filled jerry cans were heavy we would have to stop and rest along the way. Our teachers would angry when we were late getting back to class.
Sometimes boys from the village would wait for us at the water source and would mess with us. Usually they were just playing, but they would grab our containers, which made us even later. After school I would walk home at 5pm in the evening. Once I was home I would be told to fetch water from the same source for our home. At school we would fetch water in a group but at home I would go alone, which would scare me.

We are now happy that we no longer walk distances to fetch water. The bore hole Drop drilled at our school is located within the compound and it has clean water for us to drink and wash. I also come here to collect water when I return home, so I’m saved from walking in the bushes and I will no longer be disturbed by boys. I feel I’m safe now because of Drop in the Bucket and the well.

We just launched our new fundraising platform that allows people to contribute the individual items that it takes to build a well, and our good friends at Kilograph helped us put together this great Holiday video.
You can check out the video here
Or go straight to this link to see how you can help.