Doves Valley is a primary school situated in Palabek Kal Sub-County, Lamwo District, Northern Uganda. Student numbers are around the four hundred mark. The original latrines at the school were full to overflowing and the temporary ones were destroyed when flooded. Schools in Uganda were closed for two years due to Covid but reopened in January 2022. When a school inspector from the Lamwo Education Department came through the school, he threatened to close the school down because of this issue.
The problem was solved thanks to Beyond Water and financial contribution from The Rotary Club of Glenferrie. View this short video for the full story, and click on 'Read more' below.
Student numbers, while normally around four hundred, fluctuate through different seasons. When crop planting or harvesting takes place, parents abandon their families and travel over sixty km’s away to make money. Alternatively, parents will remove their children from school to go assist them with harvesting. The problem with the existing toilets threatened the future of the school.
On April 26th, the digging on the latrines started and the project was completed twenty-one days later. Pete and Sharon of Beyond Water stayed for the first five days to ensure all of the materials and tools were onsite. Due to the location of the town, all of these had to be purchased in Kitgum, more than forty km’s away on a murramm(rough dirt) road. They had to travel this road each of those days. Palabek did not even have basic shovels for sale and only one place to get meals.
The final result was three individual toilets for the girls and two for the boys, plus three urinals. Steel doors and colourbond roofing were used in the construction. The design means that an exhauster truck can come from Kitgum to remove the sewerage without breaking up the latrines for access. Funding for the project came from the Rotary Club of Glenferrie ($3,000AUD) and an individual donor ($1,000). Total cost was $5,320USD ($8,000AUD). The remainder of the funds were supplied by BeyondWater.
Thank you Glenferrie Rotarians for generating and donating this money to allow the continuing operation of this Ugandan school.