Erik Van Waveren, Global Coordinator for SNV (Netherlands Development Organisation) Voice for Change (V4CP), has lauded a Ghanaian non-governmental organisation for empowering communities to adopt proper sanitation and hygiene practices.

Intervention Forum (IF), under its V4CP, has for the past three years undertaken extensive continuous capacity building and community engagement programmes with relevant stakeholders on sanitation and hygiene issues.

It has engaged officials of the Awutu Senya District Assembly (ASDA) and the Awutu Senya East Municipal Assembly (ASEMA), both in the Central Region, assembly members, area council and unit committee members, religious bodies, landlords/landladies’ associations, traders and the media on various matters on sanitation and health.

Addressing a District Level Stakeholders Engagement forum, Mr. Waveren said he was impressed with the commitment of both IF-V4CP and its stakeholders to end open defecation (OD) and insanitary practices.

The forum was jointly organised by IF/SNV and the Awutu Senya District Assembly (ASDA) for members of the Municipal and District Sanitation Taskforce (M/DSHAT) made uo of ASDA, especially environmental health officers, area council and assembly members, religious bodies, traditional authorities, and the media.

Mr. Waveren noted the collaborative efforts of stakeholders in dealing with sanitation, was about mindsets rather than the level of education and expressed satisfaction made over the past few years, hoping they would be able to achieve their set targets.

He also recommended selling such a wonderful innovation to other communities to help them to improve their situations.

The V4C programme is being implemented by SNV in collaboration with the International Food and Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The five-year project,which is being implemented by SNV together with its alliance of local partner civil society organisations (CSOs) and networks in Ghana.

It is geared towards strengthening their capacities to generate reliable and relevant data/evidence to carry out evidence-based advocacy for sustainable improvements in key focus areas such as renewable energy, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and food security and nutrition.

The Ghana WASH component of the project is dubbed Ghana Sanitation and Hygiene for All (SH4ALL).

IF is one of four local implementing partner- Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) tasked to implement the project in the Awutu Senya East Municipal (ASEMA) Assembly and the Awutu Senya East District Assembly (ASDA).

The five-year V4CP (2016-2020} seeks to strengthen CSOs to advocate an enabling
environment in which governments and businesses provide good and affordable services for low-income segments in society.

The project has generated interesting responses from stakeholders, leading to improved sanitation and hygiene conditions in the ASDA and ASEMA.

The V4CP has empowered the citizenry to take control of sanitation and hygiene situations in their communities.
The programme allows stakeholders to get rid of open defecation, unhygienic surroundings, choked gutters and drains, as well as a pileup of refuse generated daily in the communities.

Mr. Eric Banye, SNV-V4CP Ghana Coordinator, remarked that the SNV-V4CP team had come to share ideas with stakeholders on what they had been able to achieve for possible replication elsewhere.

He said it was not there to score points or ascertain success and failures but to learn experiences from the Ghana project.
Mr Banye said apart from the convenience of accessing the facility, it also provided a source of employment for artisans and other unemployed youth engaged in the construction of household toilets.
He therefore asked the ASDA to consult micro-finance institutions to assist the citizenry to build their household toilets, as the emphasis was no longer on public toilets, but on household ones.

Mr Paul Nutsugha, Central Regional Environmental Health Officer, lauded IF and staff for their advocacy works and said the Central region had set a target for June, 2019, to declare the region open-defecation-free (ODF).

He reminded the people that current by-laws made compelled households to construct their own toilets, expressing the hope that both ASEMA and ASDA would intensify their efforts at liberating the citizenry from the quagmire of sanitation and hygiene problems in the region.

Members of the M/DSHATs expressed their gratitude to the V4CP team and IF for providing them with capacity training in various fields and to the IF-V4CP team in their efforts to deal with open defecation in their communities.
They also appreciated the extensive education imparted to them through the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), leading to marked improvements in sanitation and hygiene in the various communities.

However, they mentioned challenges such as changing engrained poor sanitation habits among the communities, lack of equipment and other requisite tools.
Mr. Stephen Kwame Quaye, District Chief Executive (DCE) for Awutu Senya District Assembly, said sanitation and hygiene were key to the government’s programmes and therefore thanked IF/V4CP for their capacity building programmes that yielded positive results in combating sanitation and hygiene problems in the communities.

As a result of the work of the NGO, Mr Quaye said the assembly was able to craft its by-laws on sanitation and hygiene for gazetting by government.

“We have been able to also remove more refuse dumps and constructed public toilets in some of the communities,” he said, adding that it was the desire of the assembly to move from the bottom of the sanitation and hygiene ladder to the top four or five in the region.

The district Environmental Health officer, Mr. Stephen Kwasi Gavi, recounted efforts so far made to achieve ODF for the 153 communities in the district.

He said however that, so far, only one community was able to do that, and 16 other communities were expected to be declared ODF by the end of this year.

He expressed his appreciation to the IF/V4CP that contributed immensely to providing assistance to the Community-Led Total Sanitation and hygiene (CLTS) activities in bringing sanitation and hygiene to the doorsteps of the people.

Members of M/DSHATs recounted the immense benefits they derived from the IF/V4C capacity graining programmes, which emboldened them to tackle sanitation and hygiene issues in their communities.