One week with

Fontes Foundation
As a part of a broader Corporate Social Responsibility strategy, Laboremus supports a
small development aid organization named Fontes Foundation. Their primary objective
is to unleash community potential by assisting disadvantaged people in Uganda with
drinking water and education initiatives. As Laboremus is established with a daughter
company in Uganda, it is natural to spend both time and money on local projects.
* Contributor to thousands of people in western Uganda

The people in the villages along the Kazinga

Channel suffer from extreme poverty. They
have to work hard to make ends meet and
they are continuously struggling for survival.
However, the population has rich access to
fishing resources, but this access is challenged
as they share territory with dangerous animals
such as crocodiles, hippos and water buffalos.
Traditionally, water has been carried
from the Kazinga Channel. This water is highly
contaminated by wild animals. The color of
the water is green and it looks like a soup.
As long as they have to get water directly
from the channel, the population suffer
from high mortality rates due to waterborne
diseases, in addition to the risk of being killed
by wild animals when fetching water. The
groundwater is salted so drilling wells for
drinking water is not a viable solution.

Safe water projects in Kasese

The installations Fontes have provided for five
different villages in Kasese in western Uganda
are based on the water from the channel. The
untreated water is pumped to a large tank,
where aluminium sulfate is added. This binds
to the sediments in the water and sinks them

When you see the importance of

Fontes work with your own eyes,
you cant say no to help. It has
such a big impact for the health
of the population and for their
lives

to the bottom of the tank. The upper layer in

the tank now clear water is then pumped
through sand and charcoal filters, whereafter
chlorine is added. The clean water is stored in
tanks at the highest point in the village. From
these storage tanks, water is distributed to
one or more central tap towers where safe
water can be fetched.
The water projects are run after the
principles of help to self-help. All villages
have established water committees, and
Fontes are providing training for usage and
maintenance of the equipment. Fontes also
guide the committees about how to manage
the accounting. The water costs the enduser 100 Uganda shillings (approx. 30 re) for
each jerrycan (23 liters) of water. The money
covers the operating costs of the system, not
including capital investments.
Despite the inhabitants contributions
by paying for the water, there is a significant
need for further funding from volunteers

and donors to cover major upgrades and

refurbishments.

Solar panel rack to Kazinga

As one of the contributors to Fontes, Laboremus
was invited to visit all the villages in Queen
Elizabeth National Park during Fontes ten
year anniversary trip. This journey gave us the
opportunity to participate in the water project
activities and to see how significant Laboremus
contribution can be in rural areas such as this.
We were also able to watch the fascinating, but
dangerous wild animal life in the area.

In Kazinga we could watch a

large number of hippos and water
buffalos. Its surprising to see
how these people interact with
the risk from wild animals as a
part of everyday life

We have seen wild animals every

day. The hippos and the elephants
are enormous you cant avoid
being amazed by them. But at the
end, the impressions from the
human life are much stronger
In Kazinga (officially 450 inhabitants,
but probably closer to 700 inhabitants),
the equipment had been out of order
for three months. Lack of electric power
and one broken pump, prevented them
to use their installations. With the total
amount of 110000NOK as contributions
during Christmas, and with practical help
from Engineers without Borders, Fontes
Foundation were able to install a solar panel
rack during our stay in Queen Elizabeth
National Park. Compared to gasolinepowered generators, a solar panel makes the
operations less expensive, increases the profit
and makes the project more sustainable.

The celebration of Fontes ten year

anniversary took place in the same village.
A function was arranged, and there were
participants from all the five villages, in
addition to political leaders, donors and
Uganda Wildlife Authority. The people in
the village arranged the entertainment and
succeeded in gathering several hundreds of
people for the function. The gratitude which
was expressed to the Fontes staff confirmed
my belief in that Fontes Foundation are using
aid funds in an important and timely manner.

I am proud of my employer who

has decided to fund the water
projects. It would have been very
depressing to see the success of
the safe water installations being
stalled by a lack of money
March 2015, Bente Aas Sjursen

FONTES FOUNDATION WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY DO

was founded in 2004 by the Koestler family
is a small scale non-governmental aid organization
has three basic areas of development aid:
bringing safe water to the fishing villages in Queen Elizabeth National
Park inwestern Uganda
youth development at Potentiam Youth Center in Kampala, Uganda
education fundraising for scholarships for people who have the
potential to bring back knowledge to the Ugandan society