Support the USD Banana Water Extraction Team!
Rural communities outside of Mbarara, Uganda face ongoing challenges with access to safe drinking water. Many families rely on contaminated sources such as open wells or shared boreholes that are often located far from home. Women and children travel long distances to collect this water, which increases exposure to waterborne diseases and reduces time for education and work. Access to clean drinking water is a basic human right, yet 81% of Uganda’s population lacks access to safe water.
Our team of five University of San Diego engineering students, advised by Dr. Frank Jacobitz, is collaborating with Professor Denis Bbosa and five students from the Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) in Uganda to address this challenge. Together, we are designing a low-cost, sustainable device that extracts clean water from banana stem waste products post-cultivation, an abundant but underutilized local byproduct of banana agriculture. This project builds upon last year’s USD–MUST partnership on water filtration, continuing efforts to provide innovative, community-based water accessibility solutions.
We aim to travel to Uganda in March of 2026 over our spring break to implement and test the device in person. By integrating local knowledge, available materials, and engineering design, our project seeks to advance environmental sustainability and promote environmental justice by empowering rural communities to use local resources to fulfill their own water needs.
Funds raised will directly support travel and implementation costs for the USD team, allowing us to collaborate on-site with our partners at MUST and bring this sustainable water solution to life. If insufficient funds are raised to support travel for the USD team to travel to Uganda, the raised funds will be allocated for the prototype to be developed on site in Uganda by our MUST partners.
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