Please like the Walk For Water 100 Facebook page to follow Richard's amazing journey walking from Melbourne to Queensland!! A whopping 2,500 kilometres in 100 days!

Richard is raising funds to help us provide clean water to villages where chimps and people are both trying to survive alongside one another. In these areas, villagers and chimps come into conflict when people encounter the chimps while collecting water from forest streams. Installing boreholes (wells) in villages away from the forest not only provides residents with a clean accessible water source, it reduces the risk of potentially dangerous encounters between people and chimps: This is both a water project and a conservation project!

Last year with the help of BridgIt Water Foundation and Suubi Community Projects-Uganda we installed 3 village wells in Bulindi.

The image below shows Bulindi chimp Leila carrying her daughters, Georgia (on her back) and Wendy (on her belly), across a busy village path near a child who has dropped her watering cans in fear after hearing the chimps coming. The photo was taken before the boreholes were installed. Now, children don't have to risk meeting chimps when they fetch water!
Richard is generously raising funds to help us install village wells in areas surrounding Bulindi where people and chimps also come into conflict at forest water sources.

To support Richard's walk and help this important water project please visit:
www.givenow.com.au/bridgitwaterfoundation

Until our recent water project at Bulindi, many local households got water from streams or springs by the forest. At such times they often encountered the chimpanzees. Many local villagers are afraid of the chimps -- especially young children, who are often tasked with fetching water. Sometimes women and children couldn't collect water at all because of the chimps; at other times, groups of children would shout and throw stones at them. Such behavior can provoke aggression from chimps and several children have been hurt as a result. In turn, this reduces local tolerance towards the chimpanzees.
In addition to providing villagers with improved access to clean safe water, the recent construction of 3 village boreholes should substantially reduce these risky encounters between chimps and people, leading to a more positive coexistence! Thank you so much to Wendy Tisdell of BridgIt Water Foundation and Steven Beingana of Suubi Community Projects-Uganda for making the water project happen! Pant hoots!!!

So pleased to announce that construction of 3 boreholes is now complete and the wells are fully operational! These boreholes will provide households from 3 villages in Bulindi with an accessible source of clean water. They also mean villagers will no longer have to collect water from forest streams where they risk running into the chimps!
Huge thanks and pant-hoots to Wendy Tisdell of BridgIt Water Foundation for supporting the borehole project and to Steven Beingana of Suubi Community Projects-Uganda for organizing the construction! It was a privilege to have Wendy, Steven and colleagues visit Bulindi this week for the opening of the wells!
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THANK YOU to BridgIt Water Foundation and Suubi Community Projects-Uganda for bringing clean water to Bulindi!!! In developed countries, it can be easy to take water for granted. We usually just have to turn on the tap. It can be a surprise to learn that in some parts of the world, accessing water is a daily struggle.
At Bulindi, local households (often children) collect water from forest streams and natural springs, walking long distances to do so, and sometimes encountering the chimpanzees -- which puts both the chimps and villagers at risk. We are so grateful to BridgIt Water Foundation and Suubi Community Projects-Uganda for funding a project to install boreholes in 3 villages at Bulindi. These boreholes will change the lives of the local households!!
The photos show the drillers hard at work on the first of the 3 boreholes in Mparangasi village!