Meet Edward
An Amazing Addition to Our Water Charity
Meet Edward.
After long days working with Acts for Water as a foreman and supply manager, Edward spends his evenings in his garden. “Gardening is my hobby and extracurricular. I enjoy it. It’s exercise,” he says.
He spends an hour every morning and another in the evening working on this garden. “After supper, I take it easy. Then I go to sleep.”
Edward is growing tomatoes and cabbage, although the cabbage has not fared well. “The rain was not enough for the cabbage this year.”
He sells the tomatoes to people in town, and sometimes to ACTS for the camp. He sends the money he makes to his family in Bushenyi, about two hours away. They use the money “for buying books and pens for my children. They are very happy,” he says. Edward has three children, one boy and two girls.
Edward is thankful for Acts for Water, who he’s been working for since 2009. In that time, he says, “I’ve improved my skills. When I came, I didn’t know how to construct sustainable gravity water systems. I was even taught how to construct sedimentation tanks. And I’ve improved my skills with bookkeeping.”
This clean water charity has provided Edward a steady income, growing skills, and a space for his gardening project. “That is why I love Acts for Water,” he says.
The gardening project not only gives him a hobby and a little extra income, it also gives him knowledge he can pass on to the communities he works with. “This experience that I gain here, I can tell it to people in the villages; I can advise people to also grow some crops to get an income.”
All of this supplements his vital work building gravity flow systems. Clean water is such an essential resource in Uganda. Growing up, he says, “We used to have unprotected spring. Now, in my home village, we have a protected spring, but no tap.”
This is a common story for the ACTS Uganda staff: as they work every day to provide water for new communities, their home villages often remain without.
It’s a reminder of how real the water crisis in Uganda is. They are willing to serve those with greater need first and work towards the day when every man, woman, and child in Uganda, has the gift of clean water.