It all began with volunteering in Uganda. Steven had decided to make a meaningful trip and wanted to help the village of Nandere with agriculture, and that’s what he did. He pruned a pine forest, cultivated banana plants and assisted in the planting of a eucalyptus forest.

Although he had helped as best as he could during the volunteering, he knew that he could not have provided any long-term assistance. So he asked the local people what they needed urgently. Most of the answers expressed the desire for rain and water. Since Steven is a very bad dancer (and an even worse rain dancer), he spontaneously offered his assistance. The result was a long-term project over several months. On site, he met with local engineers, started to make a plan and made sure to take a lot of details and information back to Germany.

Back in Germany, he set up a donation site on betterplace.org. He raised money and joined “Technik ohne Grenzen”, a German NGO. He met two more people dedicated to the project, Hannes and Steffen. In the following weeks, the three Berliners raised the necessary amount of funds for the construction of a well in the Ugandan village.

The construction project became a huge success. Inspired by this achievement of building a well for a whole community, we knew even back then that this wouldn’t be our last joint project.

You can find the complete story of the well construction here (German).

We blogged live on site. You can find all eight entries of the fountain-builder-diary here (German).

Impressions of Nandere