HENESSI SCHMIDT  

 
CLEAN DRINKING WATER  

We started our work by helping a young boy with serious health issues. I had learned herbal medicine in school and how to look at the body in a holistic way, so I was right away interested in finding the root cause for his issues. It did not surprise me that the problems with his skin, liver, heart, vessels, testicles and digestion were all connected to the issue of unclean drinking water. 

As we were going through scans and trying to find the right treatment for the boy, I knew that no medication is truly going to help unless we find a way to fix the problems with the water. I knew that there are so many other children in the area with more health issues and families that can't afford the medical care to treat them. Only way to help them all is to provide them access to clean drinking water. 
We searched for different solutions - water filters, borehole wells, water filtering bottles, rain harvesting systems, extracting water from the air etc.

Every day children and their parents have to take long walks to the well and back to provide their family with water that later needs to get boiled for the germs to be removed. Of course a lot of families can't afford the charcoal or firewood to boil their water. 
There aren't too many places to fetch water as well - few small wells, lakes or puddles for the entire village. One of the reasons why the water is contaminated is that the wells are built too shallow and get easily ruined when crowds try to fetch water from them. 
We decided that the best option is to drill a borehole well which would not dry up on dry seasons and be deep and protected enough to provide clean drinking water for a bigger community. That well would have to be drilled on a land owned by us so that we could make sure it stays protected and opened for all. 


RAIN HARVESTING SYSTEM 

After understanding how the seasons change in Uganda and seeing the contrast between the rain and the drought we figured it would also be smart to collect the rain water from rainy seasons and use it on dry seasons when the water from the wells might also be decreasing. 
When looking into different information about rain harvesting systems we understood that we could actually build a system that would also allow our community to grow food on dry seasons too and double our harvest. 

Many people in Africa, also in Uganda, can't afford to own the land that was once taken from them. Some of them are able to rent a small patch to grow food on, others have to settle for using the little money they have to buy the cheapest food they can get - rice and corn flour. This of course isn't good for their health.
We dream of buying some land and giving it back to them. Of building a garden that could offer small patches for different people in need to grow their food on. A garden that could provide the orphanage with enough food to feed their children and the other people in need that they are helping every day.
Luckily our brother Mugonzi, who is our main advisor in Bugiri, has learned agriculture and is more than happy to assist his community with building a garden with rain harvesting system and other cleaver updates to provide his people with self-grown healthy food. 


SUPPORTING LOCAL, RENEGENERATIVE BUSINESS IDEAS 

Mugonzi was also the one to give me inspiration and hope about supporting the local economy and regenerative business ideas. He shared with me that he has an idea of starting an eco-fertilizer production, which would use only natural ingredients, create many new jobs and soon start bringing profit that could be used to support the needy in his community. I was so inspired by that idea - that we could build up a community with supporting their own business ideas that are also doing something great for the nature and protecting our environment! 
We decided to start a system where we could offer capital for anyone with a good, sustainable and regenerative project or business idea. Ideas that could support the local economy and by that, eventually, give it's people independence. We believe that charity systems should also be more regenerative and learn how to help the needy in a way that would allow them to achieve independence and eventually manage on their own. 


BUILDING A REAL HOME FOR THE ORPHANAGE

Right now the orphanage is renting two simple rooms with four walls and a concrete floor - one for the boys and one for the girls.
When we first started our work, the children didn't have any mattresses and also lacked mosquito nets which caused many of them to often catch malaria. The first thing we could do was to provide them with mosquito nets. After that we were able to buy them 20 mattresses so that the kids wouldn't have to sleep on the floor and catch cold. But we know that it only helps a little because they still lack any furniture, a place to keep their personal things, a kitchen, bathroom and every morning when they wake up, they have to pile up all the mattresses again to change the room into a classroom where they can study when the teacher comes. 

We would love to offer the orphanage a real home - a place with real beds, little cupboards for the children to keep their personal things, a kitchen where they could cook healthy food, a bathroom and toilets with good hygiene and a study area with books, boards, musical instruments and a globe. We would like to make them feel safe, warm, inspired and hopeful about their future. 

We believe that if we could offer our next generations a better education, holistic understand of health, a home full of love, community full of hope, connection with nature and friends with smile on their face, our world could become better day by day, generation by generation. 
This is just the beginning of our work in Uganda, Bugiri and we see a beautiful potential in the people we are working together with and the values that we carry together, to create a better world, new ways to work together with nature, and a wiser and kinder next generation. 

Thank you for showing your interest in our journey and our dreams. If you have any questions or ideas that you would like share with us, you are more than welcome to contact us. We are opened for all feedback and suggestions. 
May the world grow better day by day.