Project: Making Waves from Cleveland to Uganda | | Drink Local Drink TapDrink Local Drink Tap

Drink Local. Drink Tap. is on a MISSION to connect Cleveland to Uganda through water.

Our Story

Drink Local Drink Tap. (DLDT) is an organization led by a native Northeast Ohioan who rows, sails, kayaks, and loves local water. Erin Huber, Executive Director of DLDT, is empowering kids and communities to Make Waves from Cleveland to Uganda.

DLDT is on a mission to CREATIVELY reconnect people with WATER through film, photography, art, education, adopting beaches, and volunteering. We inspire Great Lakes and fresh water communities to use water in more sustainable ways and share water wealth across the globe.

Our water conversation starts with drinking water. We ALL drink water, so it makes sense to start reconnecting the globe to water at the level of the individual. Drink Local. Drink Tap. uses creative education, engagement, and empowerment to connect each person to their local water sources. At the same time, we strive to raise awareness of the issues of water both at home and around the globe.

OUR LOCAL to GLOBAL WORK:

MAKING WAVES FROM CLEVELAND TO UGANDA

In a series of art, film and spring outreach events spanning from World Water Day 2011/2012 we will reach over 200,000 Great Lakers with one message:

Drink Local. Drink Tap. AND GIVE BACK.

GIVING BACK, our group has brought together: St. Bonaventure/St. Charles School in Mulajji, Village (rural) Uganda, Africa (in the Luwerro District), Stokes Middle School in Cleveland, Our Lady of the Lake School in Euclid, Metro Catholic School in Cleveland, John Hay High School in Cleveland, Citizens Leadership Academy in Cleveland, North Olmsted High School in Ohio, TEAM HOPE, Race Across America 2011, filmmakers, artists, photographers, and the Blue Planet Network to raise the funds and awareness needed to provide safe water access for St. Bonaventure/St. Charles rural orphan School in Uganda.

Although we are lucky to have plenty of safe drinking water in the US, over 700 students in rural Uganda are not so fortunate. Coming back from 30 days in Africa for project planning and filming in July 2011, we learned students and most of the community have never flushed a toilet, seen a tap, or even a lake. Students have to walk a minimum of 2.5 miles in the “non-dry” season and 4.5 miles during the dry season for water. This happens DAILY before school starts (6am) and in the evening at (6pm) 10 months per year.

The lack of sanitary and available water forces students to miss school due to: time spent gathering water, time and kerosene spent boiling water (when they can-but it doesn’t happen often), typhoid, e. coli, dehydration, or other diseases, and young girls miss school monthly because of the inability to wash properly.

If this isn’t enough, 300 of the 700 children are orphaned from parents who died in war or from HIV/AIDS. Out of these 300 and growing, the school is only able to “house” 100 and the surrounding rural community helps to house the remaining children daily. Some of the children have HIV, most have no shoes, most do not eat breakfast or lunch, there are limited books and desks, and most cannot afford the 1,000,000 shillings it costs to go to the high school.

We can’t solve every problem in Uganda or the world, but we CAN SHARE WATER and we HAVE already created HOPE for the people of the Mullajji Village and St. Bonaventure/ St. Charles.

WHY THIS PLACE?

SO, why isn’t anyone helping St. Bonaventure/St. Charles? That’s a GOOD QUESTION and we have some educated on the ground guesses-but we don’t have time to wait for an answer. These children need safer access to water NOW. We have been developing this project since July of 2010 and already have some interesting findings. A few critical things we have come to learn:

Some projects are “too small” for big organizations like Africare or Unicef to fund;
Areas of certain countries remain forgotten about by governments in Africa;
The safe drinking water that 1.1 BILLION people are in need of is one of the most INEXPENSIVE problems of our time to solve;
There are NOT ENOUGH NGOs to MAKE IT ALL HAPPEN.

So, what do we do? These children and their community deserve SAFE drinking water NOW.

The UNIQUE Impact of the Making Waves PROJECT

Drink Local. Drink Tap. is telling the story of how we built this project from the GROUND UP. NO well-building NGOs and no messy government corruption-just a few groups of people who have come together for something BIGGER than themselves.

Telling the story of building from the ground up through film will not only help St. Bonaventure/St. Charles and our active partners~it can EMPOWER other people in other parts of the world to DO THE VERY SAME THING.

MAKING THE FILM

We have documented the water PROBLEM via film and photography during a 30 day journey in July of 2011 to East Africa. This part of the documentary will be used to tell the story of the ACTUAL people we are helping, the story of the BARRIERS to survival and progress the people of Mulajji Village, Uganda, and explain parts of East African struggles in the 2010s.

See the teaser trailer HERE

We plan to break ground on the physical borehole component of the project by May 2012 creating new water access on the property of St. Bonaventure/ St. Charles School in rural Uganda (40 miles or 3 hours north of Kampala). But, we need your help.

We are filming the THE SOLUTION (completed before and after comparison) in 2012/2013 adding closure to our project which will be included in a future film. We plan to share it with the world through film festivals and people who can benefit from learning about our UNIQUE approach to sharing water across the globe.