Solar pump NUV HOP

The installation of a solar pump and the foundation of a water management committee

In North-Uganda, south of Gulu, the district Parak is located. In this district there are several manual water pumps, but for many inhabitants in this region these are either too far away or damaged. For this reason the organisation Nuv-hop has asked us to find a solution. Nuv-hop is short for Northern Uganda Village Health Outreach Project. It’s a medical development project carried out by Medical students from Belgium, Manchester and Uganda. Every summer these students go to the city Gulu to offer medical assistance and to organise health talks in the surrounding villages. The availability of drinking water is crucial for a good outcome.

To solve this problem, the students Severine, Michiel and Louis will travel to Uganda in the summer of 2019 to install a solar pump. This solar pump will be located nearby a village called Burkwoyo because this zone has the least availability to drinking water. It is estimated that around four hundred people will use this installation. A solar pump is a pump which works on solar energy, which means we will have to install some solar panels. To make our project as sustainable as possible, a water management commission will be created. This commission will consist of several local inhabitants who have the mission to protect and manage the solar pump after our return to Belgium. We will teach them how to repair small defects and listen to their knowledge during our time in Uganda. In this way a structure is created to finance the costs of potential repairs.