Village residents, Alfred and Elvarina Tolit offered land for community use free of charge. Their son Bosco Tolit, became an ACFD board member, who prepared the initial draft of this proposal. The Tolit’s came to this safe haven during the LRA war in fear of their lives, after one of their son’s was captured by the LRA war and forced to be a child soldier. Mr. and Mrs. Tolit are very humble, trusted people, who love our great God. They have moved back to their homeland some years ago and continue sharing their knowledge and skills. Alfred was also very involved with the church located on the Family Empowerment Uganda, Canaan Farm in coordination with the elders and was an assistant pastor of the church while he lived there. Elvarina was very active and instrumental in the women’s projects, including learning and making their household bio sand filter, household bucket drip irrigation vegetable plot, health and nutrition trainings, and tailoring and craft trainings. When Nadine visited her at her home in Kitgum in 2015, she had taken her sewing machine with her and made items to make enough funds to buy their first farming animals. They have been praying for the past 5 years for a much needed water source. They are in their late 70’s now.
 

The local community members involved in the project will be responsible for the formation of a governing water board and choosing borehole pump attendants, training community members, school children and other water users on proper water use and sanitation, and constructing and maintaining a fence around the borehole pump.

Community members are also in charge of encouraging households to use pit latrines, rubbish pits, proper handwashing facilities, drying racks and drying lines for their homes to maintain sanitation and hygiene.

Members of the community will also form of a unified community group, in charge of monitoring and evaluating project progress from the implementation date. They keep track of all of this by writing and submitting project accountability reports by ACFD to H2O.

 
Lastly, each household will be asked to pay a token fee of about 2,000 UGX per year or other amount that is the agreed upon amount by the water board. This will help meet attendants’ allowance and recurring expense to maintain the borehole. That money also will be used to purchase the borehole spare parts in case of any breakdown. In case of extra-ordinary expenses, the community will convene a meeting to discuss the solution.

We are incredibly grateful to the 2020 World Water Day sponsors, although the event was cancelled in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we held a "Progress in the Pandemic" outdoor event at Zoo Montana.  All sponsor donations went toward drilling this deep water well.  Faith Chapel came alongside to support over half of the cost of this well.  What a gift from God and huge blessing for Kweyo Village!

Projects like this are life changing for the 3,000 residents of Kweyo and villages in similar situations. Most of these residents are widows and orphans due to 23 years of fighting the LRA and diseases like HIV/AIDs, Hepatitis A and B, Ebola and Cholera ravaging survivors.  A village health team has already been assembled, with handwashing, hygiene and sanitation trained on site at their village distanced even in the pandemic time by ACFD.  Their community group has been formed as well, led by Terence, beginning with the foundation of unity and building community bridges. 

These clean water projects also exist to educate the next generation!
At least 200 children in Lajok-Ogayo primary school will have the opportunity to pursue a brighter future thanks to the Roots 2 Fruits Christian nursery school curriculum, which trains teachers to educate the village children with an approved Ugandan curriculum. This can only be done if there are resources (like water) to share with incoming trainers and teachers.