The Starch Factory

The Starch Factory is a school in Lira, that was established to teach the children displaced after their families were forced to leave their villages, due to the 21 year long war in northern Uganda. Of the 1.6 million refugees that were forced to flee the LRA, some of them are starting to go back to their villages, however some of them are chosing to stay in Lira as they have found work and do not want to uproot their families again. The Starch factory school teaches these children who are some of the poorest in Uganda. Up until today their main source of water was what the locals refer to as an unprotected soak which is the hole in the ground pictured in the first photo below.

The second and third photos show the consruction crew starting the drilling process, using a 5 inch drill bit they drilled 70 feet down until the drill bit hit rock. At that point they had already been submerged in water that was 15 feet in depth. The water level was replenishing very fast showing that this well will be very effective and will provide more than enough water for the school.

A temporary pump is installed so that the children can have water right now. Over the next week a concrete base will be poured and this will be left in place for the next few months while we put wells in the next five schools.

After these six schools all have safe water we will go back and start on the roundabout pumps, toilets, septics, etc that make up the whole water system that we install.

Thank you all for donating, your contributions make all of this possible.