On the 11th of July, co2balance and WAACHA, one of our local partners, net with the community in Kaliro district in a Loal Stakeholder Consultation meeting for our newest water VPA. It was one of the most vibrant meetings I have attended and led in my 4 years at co2balance.
This particular LSC had lots of questions on the technical implementation of the project and how the community would get involved. They were also quite keen on the quality of water available and the steps we would take to ensure the water available was safe.
The District Chairperson made an appearance for the meeting and spoke passionately about the need for such partnerships to meet their objectives as funds were short. he greatly expressed his gratitude and from the manner of his speech, there was no suprise how he is the District Chairperson. His crowd engagement was pretty impressive.
Each borehole was represented by ten people and led by a Water resource committee chairperson and this was confirmed during the introductions when they would stand up in unison. They assured us of their full cooperation after a discussion on their roles in borehole management and ensuring health and sanitation in their villages. The emphasis was well placed on this by the chairperson of WAACHA but it was brief as we have future planned Water and Sanitation activities as well.
All the discussions were translated and often time Noah, the Projects Director from WAACHA added a linguistic footnote. There are some phrases best expressed in the local language, which was to me a new dialect of Lusoga language. The main difference i could tell was the “D” were replaced with “Z” for example “Kuidha” which means to come was “Kuiza”.
This is a partnership I am loking forward to and I greatly thank the people of Kaliro for their warm welcome.
