One Post. One Village. Lasting Change in Uganda.
“We have never met with the WaterStep people in person, but sometimes I sit down and shed tears when I see what is going on in this community.”
– Jude Mugema, WaterStep Field Consultant
/ By Kristina Goetz
For Jude Mugema, it all started with great intentions and big disappointment.
Missionaries had come to Jude’s village, called Mpunge, in the Rakai district of southern Uganda three years in a row. They’d treated children with worms, provided clothes, and brought school supplies. They sat under mango trees and talked about future plans. The community got excited, expecting them to bring safe water, a clinic, and a school.
Ultimately, the missionaries decided to work in another village. And since Jude had connected his community to them through another project, they blamed him.
“When these missionaries never came back, they thought I’d lied to them,” he said.
It would take many months, a period of self-exile and a random Facebook post from across the world for Jude to change his community.
After the missionaries left for good, Jude was so upset he stayed in a nearby town. When people in his community feel deceived, they hate you, he said. Frustrated, he wondered: What now?
Jude prayed to God to connect him to people who might make his dream of lifting the community from poverty come true.
Resting in bed late one night in the fall of 2019, Jude saw a Facebook post about how people around the world suffer from unsafe water. He commented: We are one of them. He shared photos of children gathering dirty water from a deep, dangerous pit.
Marcia Hogg, co-founder of WaterStep, a global leader in safe water innovation, wrote back: Jude, we can help you.
“I thought it was a joke,” he said. “I never believed someone can help you. But she went and created a messenger group, and they asked: What do you want WaterStep to do for you?”
In a community with high HIV infection rates, a large number of orphans and little opportunity, there was nothing to look forward to in Mpunge village, nowhere to learn, little to do but subsist.
“These children, this community of people had lost hope due to the tragedy of losing their parents, domestic violence, illiteracy,” he said. “They didn’t know what tomorrow may be or what the future holds. They didn’t care about anything. They had no ambition.”
What Jude wanted was a rain catchment system that would act as a gathering place for the community for water. What he received was so much more.
Thanks to WaterStep supporters, he received training on WaterStep equipment to produce safe water and disinfectant, and a tank that held 20,000 liters of water for the community. It wasn’t just access to water; it was safe water to drink because of WaterStep’s patented system.
Health began to improve, and lives began to change. Typhoid, dysentery, and diarrhea began to fade.
In 2020, the community asked Jude to build a school, and he decided not to wait for someone else to do it. Little by little, he began constructing Sunrise Junior and Primary School. The COVID-19 pandemic stalled plans, but they resumed in 2021. Children from 10 villages came. He built a place where orphans could stay year-round on the property.
With so many children to care for, Jude asked WaterStep for another 20,000-liter tank. And the organization agreed.
Demand has been so high for the school that Jude has added grades every year. Now, Sunrise has 300 students and 22 employees, and the children can study through seventh grade. This is the first year, in 2025, the school will have candidates to sit for the national examination.
“Right now, you can ask a child, and maybe you ask: ‘What do you want to be?’ And this child will tell you, ‘I want to be a doctor. I want to be an engineer.’ So that’s what brings hope to me,” Jude said.
In a virtual tour of sorts, over a recent video chat, Jude walked the grounds of the 15-acre school compound to show where they grow coffee and long beans, and raise goats. Where children learn to read, drink safe water, and dream up their futures. He chatted with students in the local language, Luganda, as they peeled bananas. He hopes the coffee will yield a harvest this year and that there might be enough money to buy two Friesian cows so the children will have milk.
“This is our land where you see me walking,” he said, as he ambled a well-worn dirt path. He made a wide sweep with the phone’s camera to show bright green hills, mango trees and a brilliant blue sky.
Jude reflected on the transformation that has happened in his community in just a few short years. It started with water, he said, but it became so much more.
“So many people’s lives began to change in this community,” Jude said. “Health-wise, education-wise, financially, mentally, physically. There is no way I can express my joy toward WaterStep because all I asked God for, He answered my prayers.
“We have never met with the WaterStep people in person, but sometimes I sit down and shed tears when I see what is going on in this community. I’m so emotional because I see so many lives being touched. … The joy inside me, there’s no way I can express it. WaterStep is the steppingstone to what is happening in this community.”
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