One of the most important tasks for our work in Uganda is to conduct in-country site-visits at our project schools that have received boreholes. These visits offer us the chance to see the borehole in place and to learn how the borehole has impacted the lives of the students and staff at the recipient school. The pictures we share with you in our Newsletters are taken on site, with some of the students pumping water at their new borehole. During these visits, we also meet with the Head Teachers and their teachers to evaluate the strength of the academic program at the school, and assess the need for additional teaching tools, for teaching science lab courses, and computer technology. And the best part of each visit is that the students get a chance to thank us for the clean water with presentations that often include local cultural dances, performances, and individual thanksgiving presentations from student leaders. It is always great fun to see the students and their enthusiasm and gratitude to all of you donors!

Unfortunately, because of COVID lockdowns, we have not been able to visit schools in Uganda for the last two years. So, this year we decided to send a team of three of our Ugandan colleagues to visit the schools in our place. In early March, this team visited six schools that received boreholes from Quench and Connect during the past two years. The team included two of our former scholarship recipients, Ssenkaali Godfrey and Kayongo David, and our trusted in-country navigator and driver Nkalubo Daniel. Ssenkaali earned his degree in Development Studies and Kayongo obtained a degree in Computer Engineering.

Each member of the team was given an assigned topic, with defined questions for evaluation, and now the team has filed their reports with their findings. They did excellent work, by the way.
At one of the schools, Rugashali Parents SS, that has a new borehole, the students gave a presentation to demonstrate their needs for computers and a computer laboratory. In the picture below, you will see these students making their presentation. Notice that they are all impeccably clean and neat in their school uniforms, despite the fact that the presentation is given on the muddy ground outside their classroom. You can see that they made ‘mock’ computers out of cardboard, and notice they even made a cable extending down to the ‘cpu’ processor for their ‘laptops’! How clever.