uTurn started by 4 group members at a house church in Calgary on 2008. The group members are all believers and did ministry work. However, something was missing, and they didn’t know what it was. They were looking for internal happiness, and prayed for it and in the meantime in India they received news from the pastor where a young girl was raped as she went to the washroom outside in the field. They soon realised that something could be done for young girls and ladies and to create a safer environment. The idea of portable toilets came up. The first toilet was built in 2008 in Kolkata, the news spread, and more communities asked for the portable toilets as well. The group decided to group families together to have shared facility, that way they were able to help out more families. In 2008 after the first toilet was built they build another 12 more. The communities also had issues with women getting water, the journey that they would travel was long and was another concern. They wanted to do more and decided to give them a hand pump, this would be just for drinking water, the hand pumps had a plate that had the Government of Canada logo and our logo on the plate. The Government of Canada would match dollar for dollar what was being donated. As of far uTurn have done 70 toilets and 3 hand pumps. After this they would go back every year to do a report to see how the projects are doing.
Naming the organization came about as an aspiration of human nature of people u-turning back to Christ. George, Sam, Jay and pastor David decided as a team to come up with a proper name and move forward from there. Everyone has different backgrounds, but everyone shared the same vision. That is why the vision is still the same and we are able to get things done quicker.
We also encourage local projects; ex refugees were coming from Nepal and we were looking after them and getting them settled in and help them get connected. We held our first Canada day in 2009. uTurn is still going strong and is helping build better communities locally and globally.