African children miss 50 million days of school every year due to waterborne illness. Tragically, these illnesses are often contracted in schools that have no clean water for children to drink and no way for children to wash their hands. When schools have no water on-site, students must frequently miss class to fetch highly contaminated water from lakes, rivers, or ditches.

One Day’s Wages partnered with Ugandan Water Project to provide clean water for some of Uganda’s most underserved students.  Rainwater catchment systems, water filters and hand-washing stations were installed at 4 rural schools, reaching 2,073 students and teachers.  Previously, students and staff at these schools had to leave school grounds to collect drinking water, walking for up to two hours in a single trip to reach the nearest water source. Many of these water sources are highly contaminated.  Our partnership resulted in a 100% increase in schools that report their water source now provides enough water to meet daily needs; a reduction in schools’ water-related expenses; and an average increased instruction time of 10.8 hours per day at each school since students no longer have to leave to collect water!