Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
this year you generously supported our project “Toilet Construction at Tonkolili’s Primary Schools” with a donation. For this we would like to thank you in the name of the whole project team.
At the beginning of this year our volunteers Verena, Sophia, Henrik and Timo were in Sierra Leone for 3 months and build our Urine Dry-Diverting Toilets (UDDT) as planned. This was only possible because of donations like yours. Therefore, we would like to use this mail to explain what exactly our team did in Sierra Leone.
Arrival and preparation
Before the construction started, the work of our volunteers was mainly meetings with our partner organization MADAM, hiring the local construction workers and presenting the project to the elders of the village. In addition, the building materials had to be procured and brought to the construction site, which was more difficult than expected because of the condition of the road to the construction site.
For more information on how these problems were solved and for some photos, we recommend our blog. (Unfortunately, only in German or automatically translated)
The construction phase
After the preparations we could start with the construction. As always, we worked together with local construction workers. It is important to us that the knowledge about the entire construction process remains in the local community, so that the people there can build the toilets independently from us in the future.
The construction is divided into the following phases: foundation, substructure, floor slab, superstructure, roof and the finishing touches.
Of course, building according to German plans in a developing country like Sierra Leone does not always work exactly according to plan, but as we mentioned at the beginning of this mail, everything worked out in the end. For more detailed information about the construction, we have linked the construction phases with the corresponding blog articles, in which our volunteers describe their experiences. You can also see how the toilets are being built piece by piece.
The education program
For us at Engineers Without Borders, it is especially important that our projects are sustainable. We don’t just want to build toilets and then leave. We make sure that the toilets are used and maintained in the long term. Moreover, toilets are only one part of the solution to improving the local health situation. A strong awareness of hygiene is another important part. To this end, we have accompanied the construction with an educational program in which schoolchildren learn how diseases spread and how they can protect themselves against them.
Our plans for the future
With the construction of our toilets at the beginning of this year in Makenthi our project is not finished yet. In the next few years we want to build our toilets at two other elementary school in the area, which do not have proper sanitary facilities yet. For the second school, we will have to adapt our toilets to accommodate the higher number of students. You can continue to follow the progress of the project via the project blog.
On behalf of the entire project, we would like to thank you again. Our project was and is not possible without donors like you.
Many greetings,
Sophia Sokull and Gerrit Müller
