ENGINEERING
PONT’s Engineering volunteers find sustainable engineering solutions to needs we’ve identified with our partners in Mbale. We work with the Education, Community Health, Ambulance, University and Hospital teams to alleviate poverty.
We’ve set up a mechanical workshop that provides training and jobs. We put renewable electricity into schools and build, maintain or repair equipment for the health teams. We’ve provided clean water for 8,000 people.
The need
Poverty in Uganda impacts people’s health, livelihoods and education. It takes away opportunities we would take for granted in Wales.
Our projects
Early PONT visitors to Mbale who had engineering backgrounds spotted the potential to use their skills to do something about this. We work with people in Mbale to help give back opportunities, so they have tools to improve their own lives.
Engineers have continued to make visits each year. Volunteers pass on their expertise, troubleshoot problems and oversee projects. Importantly we also raise funds in the UK so that local Ugandan people can be employed, benefiting them as they help their communities.
Engineers have contributed to many projects but perhaps the biggest impacts have been:
Lighting up Lwandubi
Heavy rain used to stop classes at Lwandubi Primary school. Classrooms in the school now have lights, and there is power to operate laptop computers. Read more
Background
Mbale has a lush, green climate and water is not scarce – but it is often a long way from where people live, or it is contaminated.
In rural villages most people have to walk miles to collect water. The work falls mainly to women and children. Schools often have no water so children either have to bring water with them, or the school day is broken up by having to take significant time out to walk to the nearest supply of water.
Contaminated water can kill, or at the very least make people too ill to work and provide for their families, to go to school or to their field.
What we do
PONT is working with one of our Ugandan partner organisations, JENGA, to change this for people in three villages around Mbale. We share our engineering expertise and fundraising efforts, and they bring local knowledge and on-the-ground management.
Through rainwater harvesting
If a building has a tin roof, all that is needed for a basic rainwater harvesting system is some guttering and something to catch the water in. PONT funding allowed JENGA to access a mould and training to build suitable concrete water tanks in Mooni parish.
Access to the water is via a small tap towards the bottom of the container. They provide a convenient source of clean water nearby for the duration of the rainy season, and for limited periods during the dry season. This avoids the use of streams during the rainy season, when more contaminants wash into them, which is less of a problem in the dry season.
Gravity flow systems
Another option in the right landscape is a Gravity Flow System, where a stream is dammed and fills tanks on a hill supplying taps via a network of pipes lower down.
In the foothills of Wanale mountain, PONT worked with JENGA to refurbish a system that brings water to 6000 people.
They live in and around the village of Mooni – a village that had been hit by a cholera epidemic. Locals attributed half the deaths in the area to the water – even bugs that weren’t deadly on their own could be fatal to people weakened by malaria or malnutrition.
PONT volunteers brought water testing expertise which proved that the stream feeding the dam was contaminated (and University of South Wales) students had the chance to join them). They tested other sources to find an alternative. They’ve since trained a team of local volunteers to do testing, so the expertise has been shared.
An engineer surveyed the route from the new source to the tank and a volunteer designed a new pipeline and in two stages the system was brought back into safe working order.
Vincent is from Mooni. After the water project he expressed surprise that he wasn’t getting regular stomach upsets any more – it had become as normal to him as getting a cold is to us in Wales. Every day that he can go to work because he’s not ill makes a big difference!
We believe everyone should have safe water and we’d love to do more – we’re currently fundraising for an extension to the gravity flow system. By working with local partners, we focus our resources where we can be sustainable and have the greatest impact.
We’ve worked with local organisation JENGA to provide rainwater harvesting solutions and repair a gravity flow system that brings clean water to over 6,000 people.
We support a mechanical engineering workshop which trains apprentices and provides employment opportunities, taking orders from across Uganda for repairs and providing new equipment.
Thanks to PONT engineers, three PONT schools now have solar panels and one has a micro-hydro system. They can now have lights and use laptops in classrooms and offices.
Engineers have also supported the hospital link. We’ve helped with installing the Endoscopy Suite, internet access and a washing machine (the hospital’s first) and we’ve carried out repairs to equipment and facilities.
Along with the university we have investigated what local materials in Mbale might be used to build better roads and make compressed bricks that require less energy than conventional bricks.