Bringing clean water to Uganda Schools
Our two year school tanks programme in Uganda completed in July 2025! Thanks to our supporters we built 107 rainwater roof harvesting tanks in 22 schools in the Masaka District, providing much needed water to over 10,000 pupils and staff.
Scroll down for Key Programme Facts, About our first Uganda Programme, Photos and Programme News.
Find out about our new second programme in Uganda here.
Key Programme Facts
107 rainwater harvesting tanks
Providing clean water to
10,000 pupils and staff
at 22 schools
Community Support
Supported by our local
NGO partner in Uganda –
Masaka District Land
Care Chapter
Sustainable Development Goals
Supporting SDG 6 (water), SDG 2 (hunger), SDG 4 (education), SDG 3 (health) & SDG 13 (climate)
About our first Uganda programme
Schoolchildren in rural Uganda spend hours fetching water from unsafe sources up to 2 km away. This affects their studies and water borne disease is widespread. A high proportion of girls also drop out of school when they begin menstruating.
Following a successful pilot project in Kayijja in early 2023, we continued our schools programme in the Masaka district of Uganda, building 107 rainwater harvesting tanks at 22 schools using eco-blocks. The final tanks were completed in July 2025 providing much needed water for 10,000 pupils and staff – thank you so much to everyone who supported this programme.
Each school was selected following baseline research to determine existing water supply and current/future demand. We hired an experienced local engineer in Uganda to provide expert technical oversight of the construction works with our local partners ‘Masaka District Land Care Chapter’ (MADLACC).
We are very grateful to The Emmaus partnership (linking 33 UK Diocese schools, led by St Edward’s Roman Catholic SEMH school in Hampshire) for raising funds to build 14 tanks.
“The long time problem of water at our school has been solved. We feel relieved from the long distances moved every morning and evening looking for water from the well in the swamp. We now have enough water for drinking, and washing. We are saving time and energy for our class time.“
Headteacher St Jude’s School, Kayijja, June 2023.
In Uganda our work generates a range of powerful outcomes, supporting a number of different Sustainable Development Goals beyond clean water & sanitation (SDG 6):
- where we have installed tanks, attendance levels have increased due to reduced sickness levels through a reduction in water borne diseases (supporting SDG 3 – Good Health & Well-being).
- pupils miss lessons to collect water and poor sanitation leads to girls dropping out of school once they begin menstruating. With our tanks we have seen an increase in school attendance and enrolment (supporting SDG 3 and SDG 4 – Quality Education).
- our tanks are also enabling many schools to provide pupils meals for the first time and for cabbages, maize & bananas to be grown in school gardens (supporting SDG 2 – Zero Hunger).
- water from our tanks is being used to grow tree seedlings to plant in school gardens and distributed to parents and communities to enhance village micro-climates (supporting SDG 13 – Climate Action).
“We thank you for the water tanks. We were tired of collecting water from the well every day. We would stay there long, get tired and sometime felt tired of school.”
Joseph, Pupil, July 2025
This short video features interviews with teachers and pupils from Nakateete Baptist Primary School talking about the impacts our rainwater harvesting tanks have made.
There are many more schools in the Masaka region in need of clean water. Following extensive research to identify schools with the most need, we commenced a second new tanks programme in November 2025 – find out more here.
Programme News
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WaterHarvest to close in 2027
This is an important update from the Chair of WaterHarvest’s Board of Trustees, Fiona Beukes: Like other UK charities, WaterHarvest has a Board of Trustees (the Board) who act as the governing body, with legal and financial responsibility for the charity. The Board determines strategic direction, with operational leadership of the charity delegated to the…
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Our Annual Review for 2024/25
We are pleased to share our latest Annual Review for April 2024 – March 2025. We report much success with our on-going rainwater harvesting programmes in Uganda, Ghana and our final programme in India. We continue to work in remote locations, where climate change greatly affects communities still lacking access to a source of clean water close to their homes or schools.…
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Works almost complete on our school tanks programme in Uganda!
Works have started on the final tanks in our two year programme to bring much needed water to remote schools in Uganda. By the end of July, with the support of our donors we will have built 107 eco-block rainwater roof harvesting tanks in 22 schools supporting over 10,000 pupils and staff! Our tanks generate…
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World Water Day 2025
The United Nations World Water Day is held each year on March 22nd to celebrate water and to inspire action to tackle the global water crisis. Access to water is a human right but 2.2 billion people still live without safely managed drinking water services, with devastating impacts for their lives and wider society. WaterHarvest…
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Our new Annual Review!
We are delighted to share our latest Annual Review for the previous financial year, April 2023 – March 2024. During the year we delivered four rainwater harvesting programmes in India. We also commenced a new programme in Uganda with our local partner ‘Masaka District Land Care Chapter’ (MADLACC) and a pilot programme in Ghana with our local partner Saha…
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It’s World Water Week – watch our new video from Nakateete school in Uganda!
August 25 – 29 2024 is World Water Week – to celebrate we are sharing a new video highlighting the impact our work is having in schools in Uganda. We built four rainwater harvesting tanks using ecoblocks at Nakateete Baptist Primary School early this year. We recently filmed teachers and pupils from the school to…
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NBS TV highlights impact of our tanks to schools in Uganda – watch now!
Uganda’s NBS Television visited two schools with our tanks in June 2024! In Uganda we are building rainwater harvesting tanks transforming the lives of 10,000 school children in 22 schools. We have built 47 tanks at nine schools and are raising funds for the remaining 60 tanks at 13 schools – find out more here.…
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Why we harvest rainwater
Many people ask us why at WaterHarvest, we harvest rainwater and why we don’t dig wells, sink boreholes or invest in piped water. The answer is that we believe that small scale rainwater harvesting structures are the best solution for families in the remote, arid and semi-arid areas that we work in. The reasons behind…
