RS, a trading brand of RS Group plc, a global provider of product and service solutions for industrial customers, today announced its recent participation in a week-long build of 30 of the charity’s innovative manual washing machines.
These machines will go into dwellings across Kampala in Uganda to help reduce time spent on the back-breaking task of handwashing clothes. Currently, women and girls in areas like Kampala walk 3.7 miles each day to collect water and clean their families’ clothing.
The Divya 1.55 washing machine reduces time spent on this by 70 per cent, giving women an opportunity to enter paid work and girls a chance to access education, which is critical.
More than 100 RS colleagues have taken part in this activity across four days at the site on Lammas Road, Corby. They worked in pairs on individual workstations to build each part of the machine, resulting in 30 fully functioning machines by the end of the week.
Engineer and founder of the Washing Machine Project, Navjot Sawhney, said: “It is fantastic that the team at RS is once again supporting us on a build project for some of the poorest communities in the world.
“RS is also helping us to develop data collection from the washing machines. This will allow us to accurately measure the impact they have on the people and communities who use them.
“It will also help us to understand not only how they are used, but how we can continue to improve the design based on the environments they are in.”
The washing machines will be shipped to Uganda in January 2024 and distributed in February.
