Ryabiregnye Village Uganda
For nearly a decade, we’ve been working with Reach One Touch One Ministries to bring safe water to struggling communities in Uganda. ROTOM is dedicated to uplifting some of the most vulnerable people in any community – seniors and children. While grandparents are a cornerstone of any community, many older adults in Uganda are struggling due to a lack of social support. ROTOM provides much-needed medical and financial support for over a thousand older adults and their orphaned grandchildren throughout Uganda and Ethiopia.
While ROTOM offers financial and medical support, our safe water initiatives provide relief from water insecurity – a major problem in many ROTOM beneficiaries’ lives. Last June, we joined forces in Ryabirengye Village in Rukiga District, Uganda, to bring safe water to more than 2,000 people in the community.
The project was installed at Ryabirengye’s ROTOM Outreach Centre, which provides medical support to more than 2,400 community members, including 300 seniors. We chose this spot for our project site so the clinic staff would have abundant clean water on site, empowering them to provide safer and more effective medical care to community members in need.
The project was also a much-needed alternative to local water sources for thousands of community members. Before the project, most Ryabirengye residents relied on unprotected water sources outside the community which left them vulnerable to waterborne diseases. Many of these sources are several kilometres away from the community, requiring people to walk down steep slopes to reach unprotected streams. This burden was especially heavy on the seniors who rely on ROTOM for support.
In September 2023, the water system at Ryabiregnye Village ROTOM Outreach Centre opened up to the community. Now, the seniors of Ryabirengye and their families can rest easy knowing they have access to quality medical care and a reliable, abundant source of safe water.