Earlier this month, David (UVP board member currently working in Uganda on water issues and a sustainable water storage business), and I were invited to a UWASNET-organized conference on Marketing Sanitation and Hygiene, specifically focused on latrines.
The conference was in Kampala, and representatives from all the largest NGOs were there – from HIP (Hygiene Improvement Project, an arm of USAID), from Busoga Trust (a well-established Ugandan NGO from our region), from Plan Uganda, and from many others. We sat in a huge, shiny conference room with a projector to display lap-top power-points on the wall (wow, how American!), surrounded by officially-dressed Ugandans with PhDs and years of experience working on sanitation issues.
The people surrounding us were friendly as well as knowledgeable, however, and we took advantage of their kindness by seizing them and questioning them on a variety of issues. We are just now beginning to work on the issue of latrines in our villages, and their advice and the presentations were exceedingly helpful. Many of them, too, assured us of their willingness to help UVP in future, and invited us to their own project areas to see their work on sanitation.
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