​ECO International visited Bugiri, Uganda in 2012 to assess Bugiri’s drinking water system.  The main municipal system,  built with aid from the French government in the 1970’s, was largely dysfunctional.  Nevertheless, local officials asked that ECO International focus first on rebuilding a separate system (wells, storage and conduits) serving the Bugiri regional hospital.  ECO International prepared a scope of work and funding request to The Rotary Foundation, which responded with a $35,000 grant.  ECO International, by and through its Country Director Edwin Osibo, oversaw drilling of two new wells, refurbished the water tower, and repaired the service lines from the wellheads to the hospital.  Once water began to flow, decades of leaking pipes and clogged toilets became apparent and ECO International serviced those problems too. Following on that work ECO International has continued serving the hospital administration with regular maintenance and repair of the hospital building and furnishings.

​ECO International has partnered with Days for Girls in Bugiri, mainly through the volunteer services of our Country Director Edwin Osibo.  Days for Girls provides support for female students at the time of and following their first menstrual cycles.  In addition to providing these young women with menstrual pads, Days for Girls advocates for continued education of female students.  Edwin plays a key role in that effort within the context of a male-dominated family structure, often entering the homes (huts) of these families to speak with the students’ fathers about the benefits of allowing their daughters to continue their education.  ECO International is proud to support the mission of Days for Girls.

​We asked Edwin Osibo to design a project and he surprised us with a plan to build a community chicken growing operation.  The Bugiri Poultry Coooperative is comprised of Edwin Osibo, as Managing Member, and five other individuals as Associate Members, all of whom will work cooperatively to raise chickens and gather eggs for sale in Bugiri.  Growing chickens and eggs is actually the easy part.  The difficulty will be in sustaining the Cooperative as a business, particularly with the organizational governance issues that will surely arise.  ECO International is a multidisciplinary organization and we stand ready to guide the Members of the Bugiri Poultry Cooperative, but whether it succeeds or fails we see it as a helpful step in the economic maturation of the participating families.

​​Gold production at unregulated mining sites in Uganda relies heavily on child labor.  The use of elemental mercury to extract gold from marginal diggings has profoundly negative impacts on every individual in the mining camps because the mercury is vaporized in the last step of capturing the gold, often at the family fire pit.  Besides the immediate neurological harm to anyone breathing the fumes, mercury deposition on adjacent cropland will result in long term community exposure to that toxic element.  The government of Bugiri District has requested that ECO International help find solutions to the myriad problems associated with this activity. (We have suggested tighter controls on elemental mercury.)  Only with a deeper engagement with the community – at a substantial cost of time and money – will it be possible to meaningfully help these mining communities.  This remains a long term goal of ECO International.