Uganda Village Project 

UVP’s main area of focus is our Healthy Villages Program. The Healthy Villages Program is an innovative, grassroots approach to addressing rural healthcare issues. The program aims to provide healthcare and preventative health education to people in the rural Iganga District who would not normally have access to such services.

In each of our Healthy Villages, we work with village communities to create Village Health Teams, which function as a community’s first point of contact with the greater health care system. UVP provides education, training, and other support to local community leaders and the general population of each village on malaria, sanitation and hygiene, well and latrine construction, eye care, obstetric fistula, STI /HIV testing and treatment referral, and safe motherhood. We collaborate with local partners to create strong health care referral networks and provide subsidized malaria nets to village households. We also work to strengthen the five Health Centers near our Healthy Villages by providing durable medical goods (stethoscopes, resuscitators) and training workshops on prenatal, neonatal, and obstetric fistula care.

UVP also works to provide communities with safe water using a three-pronged appriach: community constructed shallow wells, safe water storage, and chlorine additives to make sure water is safe when it is used. UVP’s Safe Water Program has been highly successful and we are scaling-up to meet the pressing need for safe water in the Iganga District.

Because orphans and other vulnerable children face many challenges in the Iganga District, UVP supports them by providing the district’s only secondary school scholarship program. Through this program, more than 130 students have been able to realize their dreams of secondary education.

We have enrolled 18 villages in the Iganga District into our Healthy Villages Program, which started in 2009. The Healthy Villages Program has been highly successful.  In 2011 alone, the Uganda Village Project was able to distribute 1500 mosquito nets to protect villagers against malaria, transport 33 patients to obstetric fistula repair camps, provide 927 maternal health and family planning consultations, screen and transport 26 villagers to eye camps for treatment and surgery, provide 11 people with sight-restoring eye surgery, give 87 people eye medication, screen 2,479 people for HIV, and train Village Health Teams in each village to promote community health and well being. We also piloted a new approach to family planning, focusing on the role of men as partners.

Through our WASH program we helped villagers to build 5 community-constructed shallow wells to provide safe water, build 676 tippy tap hand washing facilities, dig 326 rubbish pits, build 138 plate stands, and build 90 latrines.  85% of the villages we have worked in now have latrine coverage. 

One of our current needs
In Iganga, access to water at all, let alone safe water, is greatly lacking in many villages. Those water sources that do exist are often severely contaminated, making cyclical bouts of severe illness and premature death a part of everyday life.  Through our community constructed shallow well program, we work with village communities to build shallow wells which provide a lasting source of safe water. We also train village members in well maintenance and in water safety. We built 5 of these wells in 2012, helping 2800 people to access safe water, and With your support hope to build another 5 wells in 2013.