CLEAN, ACCESSIBLE WASH FOR STUDENTS IN GHANA

Deep Wells and WASH Education for the Ashanti Region

Water is health, education, community empowerment, dignity, hope, and life. Women and children, especially girls, are disproportionately affected by a lack of access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), and shoulder the largest burden in water collection worldwide. Globally, women and girls spend 200 million hours collecting daily water for their families - that’s 22,800 years every day (WHO, 2019). With no safe water or sanitation at home, at school, in health facilities or workplaces, women and children in developing countries can be condemned to a lifelong battle of wasted time and opportunity, of drudgery, disease and indignity, which is magnified even further as the mind and body ages. This project intends to make WASH access more equitable, and will address persistent barriers to adequate WASH practices in the Ashanti region of Southwest Ghana by providing deep wells and extensive WASH training.

Background

This GOOD DEED addresses the desperate need for clean, accessible water and WASH education in the Ashanti region of Southwest Ghana. The World Bank estimates that 55% of people living in this region lack access to drinking water from an improved source that is accessible on premises, available when needed, and free from faecal and priority chemical contamination (WBG, 2022). Although the majority of Ghana is covered by savannah, and is mostly flat plains with very few rivers, more than five million people rely on surface water to meet their daily water needs, leaving them vulnerable to water-related illness and disease, such as malaria and typhoid (USAID/SWP, 2021). The WHO lists malaria as the leading cause of premature death in Ghana (WHO, 2019). Illegal mining activities in the Ashanti region have also led to widespread pollution of surface water. Gold mining contaminates water sources with toxic metals, including mercury, fluoride, and arsenic (USAID/SWP, 2021). Approximately 60% of the surface water is polluted nationwide (Yeleliere et. al., 2018). Additionally, 22 million Ghanaians lack adequate sanitation services, such as a toilet or handwashing station (Yeleliere et. al., 2018). Without these basic services, people in Ghana frequently suffer from dehydration, malnutrition, and diarrhea (the leading cause of death in the developing world). The impact of women, adolescent girls and children reclaiming time and opportunity for empowerment through education should not be underestimated; by investing in the health, human rights and well-being of students in the Ashanti region, we invest in their family’s overall health and well-being, building a more prosperous and advantageous world - one WASH project at a time.

The good deed

To improve the equitable distribution, effective usage and maintenance capacity of WASH services in this area, people in the Ashanti region must collect sufficient, clean water from improved water wells in order to meet their potable, cultural, and domestic needs. At present, communities are not able to bring about the changes required without external assistance due to high poverty rates and low awareness levels, particularly in relation to the need for improved hygiene and sanitation practices. There is inadequate resource allocation from the local Government to meet targeted WASH priorities, such as SDG6, leaving more than 1/2 of the population with a lack of access to safe water and WASH education. Our GOOD DEED will contribute to one hour of WASH training to prevent diseases for a student in Ghana. This project intends to directly address WASH access inequalities by providing deep wells and WASH training for communities in the Ashanti region.