Call to Care Uganda (CTCU), a Madison-based nonprofit has, since it was created in 2007, provided more than 60 wells, brought the gift of water to more than 50,000 people from numerous Ugandan villages. And it plans to continue that effort this year.

CTCU founder and President Martha Wells Hoffman is preparing for another trip to this beautiful, but impoverished country. Hoffman created CTCU in 2007 after a trip to Uganda the previous year. According to Hoffman, though she went to Uganda with the hope of being able to help, she didn’t have any firm idea of how best to accomplish that goal.

“In 2006, I traveled to Uganda. The Monday after Thanksgiving, I got on a plane and went. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to be able to do to help, but I knew I needed to go there and just see with my own eyes. And to the shock of my family and friends, to put it mildly, but I really was compelled to do this and my life has changed ever since,” said Hoffman. “It took about a year of hard work and grit to get our 501c3 status, and over the last decade we have honed down to not just health and education, but to water and...the impact we have seen at villages and at schools. And so that became our primary focus.”

Providing clean and available water to a village is transformational, said Hoffman. The need for clean hydration is obvious, but when wells are built, the ripple effect is enormous for the entire village.

“It all starts with water and the impact that a clean water source has for a community is quite simply huge. It’s not just the improved health, and that is major. When these wells are installed, people no longer die from dehydration; they no longer die of diarrhea, or typhoid. These projects have an immediate health impact on these communities. But there is also a safety factor for the person who has trekked miles each way to get water,” said Hoffman.

“Further, with water right at hand, women of the villages are no longer obligated to travel great distances to access water, and can focus instead on ways to earn a living and spend more quality time with family, realizing dreams and being valued for their talents like never before,” she said. “Likewise, girls have the opportunity to regularly attend school rather than transporting water all day. Bodies and souls are both replenished.”

Imagine having to walk five miles, each way, multiple times a day, to simply get enough water to make food for a family, Hoffman suggested.

“In Uganda, culturally, getting water is the work of girls and that puts them in danger. Also, because they are involved in this task day in and day out, they don’t have the opportunity to go to school,” Hoffman said. “When villages receive a well and there’s a thousand people living there, the girls and other children are immediately given an opportunity to go to school. They are clean, they are able to wash and be healthier, so there is a dramatic reduction in common diseases and an easing of the daily burden on women.

“When there is clean and safe water, you don’t need to gather firewood so that you can boil water all day. The ripple effect for these communities is truly amazing,” she continued. “The living conditions change so much and the opportunities become available to start businesses, go to work—the development of an entire community is dramatic, and I have seen that with my own eyes.”

In villages that the organization has assisted by installing wells, the level of change is “incredible,” according to Hoffman.

“Not just the health and vitality and the kids walking to school in their uniforms, but seeing the businesses, farming, tomatoes, bunnies—all due to clean water. The houses change because now they have water to make mud bricks; with water the change is truly breathtaking,” Hoffman said. “We feel so lucky to be involved with this work. We drilled our first well in 2007 and it was a village of 800 people, and in January of this year we just drilled well number 68, and knowing how many people we can impact and seeing the joy is something I am grateful for.”

According to Hoffman, collaborating with Ugandans on their health and progress is an incredibly effective way to make a difference.

“Sometimes people think the problem is so great that there is nothing we can do to change it, but that’s not true. We can and I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” Hoffman said. “CTCU is focused on providing clean and vital water, but also on empowering and equipping residents to realize sustainable change. Villagers come together as teams to oversee the operation and maintenance of their wells, ensuring the water keeps flowing. Their elected committee handles collaborative decision-making and funding of future maintenance while transforming daily life.”

Hoffman said CTCU partners annually on March 22, and joins with other individuals and organizations around the globe in celebrating World Water Day. The U.N. set aside this day back in 1993 to raise awareness of the more than two billion people living without access to safe, clean water, according to Hoffman.

This year’s theme for World Water Day is Groundwater: Making the Invisible Visible, uniting to preserve and sustainably manage this most precious “hidden treasure.”

According to WHO and U.N. statistics, diarrhea is the number-one killer of humans on the planet, and almost all of that stems from unclean water and water-borne diseases. Dysentery, cholera, typhoid, and other diseases are caused by drinking unclean water. In 2017 more than 1.6 million people, more than 500,000 of them children, died from diarrhea caused by preventable disease.

Annually, that is more than the combined number of deaths from intentional injuries, which include homicides, conflict-related deaths, and terrorism combined.

“Water is life,” said Hoffman.

For more information, to donate, or to find out more about volunteering with CTCU, visit www.calltocareuganda.org or write CTCU at P.O. Box 1075 Madison, CT 06443.