If you attended the CWS Benefit on August 30th, then you already know about CWS’ newest endeavor: The CWS Social Enterprise Competition! The competition officially launched the day after the Benefit at a workshop for CWS Fellowship Program Alums, where we challenged them to come up with social enterprise solutions that meet the needs they saw in their fellowship village. To the left is the competition announcement that we sent to our alums back in May!
Over the past 2 months, CWS Co-Founder, Chuck, and I have been mentoring 6 teams of Fellow Alums, helping them develop their social enterprise ideas and craft 10-minute pitches. Last Friday, the teams presented their pitches via webex to a panel of 5 judges (Sarah Wood, Ryn Miake-Lye, Derek Brine, Laura McGorman and Addy Awofisayo), and after a difficult dilberation, 3 finalists were selected!
On November 9th, competition finalists, Mark Moermans, Ben Powell, Zoe Anderson, Kelsey Barton-Henry, Alex Zorniger, and Michelle Butler, will be traveling to Boston to pitch live to a new panel of judges and compete for a $10,000 Prize to pilot their social enterprise in one of CWS’ partner villages in Ghana. We’re so proud of our finalists, who are aiming to solve very dire needs ranging from access to electricity to santitation to malnutrition!
If you are in the Boston area, we would love for you to join us for the finals to celebrate the conclusion of the competition! Admission is free, click here for more details and to RSVP!
Tindan safe storage containers lined up and ready to be filled with clean drinking water!
Driving into the village this morning, we could tell there was a different atmosphere for opening day. All of the women and children, especially the girls, were dressed up in their best clothes. As word of our arrival spread through the village, people started to gather at the Polytank we had spent the last four days building with them. Although we don’t have a large village, we could still sense the gratitude and excitement of the day. All the women were smiling and quickly lined up to get their first batch of water. Even though we didn’t understand the language, we could tell that the women in charge of the business were prepared and did all the work without much help from us. It was definitely a day none of us will soon forget. Below are descriptions the most memorable part of the day from each of our team members:
Lubna, Jessie and Lauren hanging with some ladies
Lubna’s significant moment was when she entered the village and noticed that all the women and girls had dressed up. For her, it signified that the water treatment system was valued by the community, and that it was a very special day.
For Jessie, it was noticing that everyone seemed to understand the importance of the small details. Her favorite moment was seeing one of the older women in the community motion that she would keep the lid on her safe storage container with a designated drinking cup on top to prove she knew what to do.
Joe, Wahab, Jessie, Lubna, & Lauren all take a break after very succesful opening day!
Joe felt very excited on opening day knowing that Tindan officially had clean water. It was difficult seeing the community continue to drink dugout water during the installation and distribution process. It was relieving to finally see the community members utilizing the safe water source and knowing that this could significantly improve their health.
Lauren felt gratified knowing they helped the Tindan community get the clean water they so clearly desired. It took no convincing to gain approval from the community to install the system. Five days after approaching the chief, opening day was a great success! The way everyone lined up on time, and were so pleased with the taste indicated that the community could not wait to have a fresh water source.
Time is flying by in Tamale! It was just last week that we were finishing up orientation and now opening days are almost here!
Steven, Tiffany, Nicole and Britty on the way to their village
One of the words that we like to use to describe our fellows is plucky! Their ability to go with the flow, find humor in frustrating situations, and make it through the heat and long days in the village is what makes our fellows SO awesome! These two teams are definitely the perfect display of that! The two villages the fall fellows are implementing into are Tijo and Tindan. They are both in the same direction and about and hour and half outside of Tamale. With the long drive and about 8 hour days in the field both these teams are the definition of plucky! Even though tired from their days, all the fellows return back to Gillbt in time for dinner with positive attitude and great stories!
Tiffany and some men of Tijo snap a proud pic in front of thier finishedpolytank stand
Both teams have completed their polytank stands and training of the women. Today the teams are off distributing their safe storage containers from household to household. The distribution of buckets is a very important time in the implementation process. This is the first time you are able to get one-on-one with each household to not only explain the water treatment center but to also answer any questions they may have.
Kids of Tijo! No doubt that they love the fellows company over the past few days!
Britty, Steven, Nicole, Tiffany and, translator Shak have been hard at work getting ready for opening day on Wednesday! They are implementing into the village Tijo, which is one of CWS’ largest villages to date with 187 households. Because of their number of households they needed to add ina few more days of safe storage distribution.
Joe, Lauren, Jessie, Lubna and translator, Wahab, aside from some car troubles, have breezing through their implementation into Tindan. Tindan has 37 total households. They are having their opening day tomorrow and we can not wait to hear how the big day goes!
Assembling the CWS safe storage containers
In the next few days you will be hearing from these teams directly to get a real sense of their time in their village!
All of the pictures below are of Team Tijo! I have yet to have the chance to snag one of the teammates from Tindan to get pics to upload—those will hopefully be up by tomorrow!
Today the fellows are off to hold their chief meetings with their new villages. Yesterday they went to their villages to set up the meeting and today they will be sitting down with their respected chief and elders to talk about how they can bring clean drinking water to their entire community.
We are all anxiously awaiting the details about the meeting and of course with the village’s final decision!
In the meantime, we went out to dinner to cheers the fellows good luck in their meetings and to celebrate bringing more communities clean drinking water. We all (yes, all 10 of us) piled into the jeep and headed to Swad– a CWS fav!
Yesterday started off with alum training. In the fellows site visits to Kurugu Vohoyili and Kpalung the Fellows collected dugout water. They used this water to practive performing water quality tests the lab, and to practice the alum treatment. The alum is the first step in the water treatment process. It works to remove the turbidity from the water—the particle all flock together and fall to the bottom, leaving clear water on top and the sludge on the bottom. Having only seen a video of the women doing it themselves, it was important for the everyone to get comfortable with using alum.
Practicing dugboni
After training, the fellows were off with their translators to get some more Dugbani lessons. They went over the different word pronunciations and then did some mock households-visits to get comfortable with the dialogue.
Later in the afternoon we all headed to the office for a presentation on monitoring given by our Ghana Country Director, Brianan. She went over what we look for in monitoring, how we troubleshoot any issues and really what she does on a day to day basis. Brianan did a great just and the fellows got a good senses as to what monitoring entails.
The Fall Fellows listening as Brianan explains her job as CWS’ Ghana Country Director
The fellows were off early this morning to put their knowledge to the test! They headed off to Manguli and Gbung to do household monitoring. They were all pumped to get back in the field! Tomorrow they will be approaching their new villages– a very exciting day which will be celebrated with a dinner at Swaad!
At the beginning of October, CWS field staff, Shak and Amin, brought their knowledge about water and sanitation to a primary school in the village of Kpalung. Their presentation was similar in content to the presentation that Wahab and Peter gave in September to a school in Gidanturu. You can read about their experience here. These water and sanitation presentations are part of a larger education initiative that CWS has been introducing to some of its partnership communities. While CWS is continuing to monitor these communities as it normally does, the field staff has added education to its monitoring regimen. The objective is to educate the students on basic health and sanitation with the hopes that they will put what they learn into practice and influence their families to do the same. It’s also fun for us to get in front of the classroom and to hear the opinions of the younger folks in the villages. I hope you enjoy the pics!
-Brianán
Shak and Amin talk to the student body of Kpalung
Shak and Amin use a salt water solution to show the students that just because water is clear, it does not mean that it is in fact clean!Amin watches amongst the crowd.
The students get ready for a game of “healthy habits” tag.The “healthy habits” vs. “waterborne diseases”
The first day of orientation consisted of a crash course of information about Ghana, the global water crisis, waterbourne disease, different water technologies, and finally the nitty gritty details of how we do it! It was a great day with lots of great discussions.
Presentations were broken up by a midday Scavenger Hunt– a great way to get our fellows out there and comfortable in the hustle and bustle of the Tamale Market. Both teams came back with only three missing items (Obama paraphernalia and a Diet Coke posed to be the hardest to find) but because Wahab’s team made it back first they took the crown!
After some orientation the fellows were off with Sam, Shak and Wahab to get a look into the village lifestyle while also getting to see the water treatment centers working within a community. First stop was Kurugu Vohoyili! Kurugu Vohoyili is one of the smaller villages that we work in, with about 30 households, but the personality of this village is huge! The men, women and kids welcomed the new fellows with smiles and were so excited to hear that they would be implementing into a new village. Fusiena, one of the women that helps run the water center was especially excited and wanted to take a picture with each individual fellow!
Next stop Kaplung! Kaplung is a great example of how the project is one that can be tailored to what’s going to work best in the community. The women who run the center wanted their center in the middle of the village, as opposed to being next to the dugout. As we can explain why most villages put it near their dugout, in the end it is always the communities decision. With the help of donkey carts to transport the water, having the center in the village has turned out to work just fine for Kaplung!
At this point in the day the sun was coming down hard and we were all starting to run low on fuel, it was time to head back into town to grab some grub! After lunch, it was off to the lab for training on water quality testing.
Today was the official start of the 2012 Fall Fellowship Program! After a day of traveling from the States to Ghana, and then another full day riding the bus from Accra up to CWS’ headquarters in Tamale, Tiffany, Brittany, Steven, Lauren, Lubna, Nicole, Joe, and Jessie arrived at their home for the next three weeks: GILBT guest house! Stay tuned for more updates as our Fellows complete orientation and then start work in their villages!
In September, CWS field staffers decided to bring their knowledge about water, sanitation and waterborne disease to the classroom. The CWS field staff team, which includes Peter, Shak, Wahab, Amin and me, Brianan, (you can read our bios here) met every week in August to prep. During household visits, we usually only talk to the older members of the families, especially the women who are in charge of collecting drinking water. So we were all excited to talk to students in some of our partnership communities. Peter and Wahab presented in a primary school classroom in the village of Gidanturu. Shak and Amin are planning to present at the primary school in Kpalung.
Peter presenting to students in Gidanturu
For our presentation in Gidanturu, we went the week before to schedule a day that would work for Yussef and Fuseini, the head teachers at the school. Seeing what life was like in the classroom was an experience in itself. “School in the village is different from school in Tamale”, says Peter. And I could tell what he meant the second I stepped foot inside the classroom. When we arrived early on Monday morning, the children, who ranged from 3 years old to 10 years old, were scattered about and playing inside and outside the school. Fuseini had just arrived from Salaga (it was about 10:30 am by this point) and was still in his travel clothes. He told us that he comes to teach in Gidanturu during the week but lives in Salaga on the weekends. So the students were occupying themselves in anticipation of his arrival.
Clear water is not always clean water!
Fuseini walked us into the classroom and gave us some chalk to write on the board. He gathered the children who were outside and brought them in to sit at their desks. Despite his tardiness, he had exceptional command over his students. I wrote “Community Water Solutions: Healthy Habits” on the chalk board and Peter and Wahab started the presentation, while I sat on the sidelines and let them steal the show. Peter and Wahab kicked off the class with a demonstration on clean water vs. clear water. They used 3 water bottles: 1 filled with treated polytank water, 1 filled with a salt-water solution and 1 filed with dugout water. Then they invited students to select and taste which ones they thought were clean and which ones they thought were contaminated.
A student in Gidanturu getting ready to taste water in the bottle – hope its not salty!
The students immediately decided that the dugout water was contaminated, which was obvious to the naked eye because the water was dark brown (nobody tasted this sample). They brought up several students to distinguish between the salt-water solution and the polytank water (they were both clear solutions in water bottles so it was impossible to tell the difference just by looking).
Wahab reviewing the lessons learned from the water taste test!
The salty water surprised the students. Peter and Wahab then talked about water contamination, the spread of waterborne diseases, rainwater collection and proper drinking water storage.
Healthy Habits vs Waterbourne Diseases
The newly empowered instructors concluded the lesson with a “healthy habits tag game” outside. Two students volunteered to be “it” and took on the roles of the waterborne diseases, Diarrhea and Cholera. Five students volunteered to be 5 different healthy habits such as: washing your hands with soap and water and drinking safe water collected from the polytank. These “healthy habits” each got 3 lives, whereas the rest of the students were not given any lives. If you were tagged aka contracted Cholera or Diarrhea, you were to sit by the tree that was designated as the hospital. After five minutes, the students who practiced healthy habits were the only ones not in the hospital since they were living healthier lifestyles and were less likely to contract these waterborne diseases. The game was complete mayhem but the students liked it and understood its message, which was what we were going for.
Healthy habits tag!
After our presentation, Fuseini dismissed the children for lunch. Their day of school had so far consisted of sitting and listening to our presentation for an hour. While I was discouraged by the inefficiencies of the village school system, Wahab, Peter and I felt like our presentation had made an impression on the students. You could tell by their participation and enthusiasm that some of these children were stimulated and interested by what we were telling them. There will be no way for us to know if they actually wash their hands with soap and water before eating and after going to the bathroom. We don’t have the monitoring capacity to be observing their habits 24/7. Maybe they will put what we taught them about healthy habits into practice, maybe they won’t. But at least they learned something new that school day.
This past Friday Ghana honored its late, great leader Kwame Nkrumah with its annual national holiday, Founder’s Day. Here’s to the father of the independent Ghanaian state – Happy Birthday Kwame!
