Alexa, Linda, Julia, and Emily getting their groove on at Sparkles
HAPPY 2013 FROM THE WINTER FELLOWS!!!! We brought in the New Year at Sparkles, a fun Tamale bar/restaurant! The fellows had a great time breaking it down with their translators and the locals!
Amanda, Caroline, Jorda, Alexa, Saja, Kara, and Sam practicing a school education lesson
The fellows had Tuesday morning off to rest; they will soon begin their schedule of VERY early rises! After lunch, the afternoon was used for more training and team bonding exercises. To make the teams feel more connected, there was a discussion of having team jackets from this site and similar, so that there was a healthy feel of competition with fun. First, Shak and Peter taught fellows school education lessons. This group of fellows will be the first to use school education as part of their implementation. The lessons allow the fellows to target the children in the village to always drink clean water from the CWS water treatment center. We want to ensure all members of the household are aware of the benefits of clean drinking water.
Lindsay going through the ropes course with the help of her teammates
The fellows then split into two groups and completed some team building and bonding exercises. One exercise included eliminating fellows’ senses and then having them work together to communicate. The other exercise was a ropes course in which all fellows started on one side and had to get to the other, without touching the rope or going through the same hole twice. It was pretty hot and sunny out, but the fellows definitely had a lot of laughs (and so did us leaders watching them)! Employers, in the current scenario, are frequently taking advantage of such opportunities for improving employee welfare and increasing productivity at the same time. In fact, team building activities for work can also bring employees closer and build a bond with one another. Their ability to build relationships through such events can benefit their professional lives and also create a friendlier atmosphere in the office environment.
Kara, Katie (the birthday girl), and Julia enjoying dinner at SWAD
For dinner, we went out to SWAD, one of the best restaurants here in Tamale. The fellows had great meals, from butter chicken to mushroom pizza! It was Katie’s birthday, so we all sang and she had a candle to make her wish!
Today, the fellows went to visit villages for the first time! Teams A, B, C, and D went with Kristen and translator, Amin, to Sakpalua and Kadula. Teams E, F, and G went with Sam and translator, Peter, to Chani and Kagburashe. All 4 villages are villages in which past fellowship teams have implemented the CWS model. When we arrived at the villages, the first order of business was to greet the chief. Then we traveled down to the dugout.
The dugout is the term used for the surface water the village uses as their water source. During our walk, many children joined us; by then time we got to the dugout, we resembled a parade! The children love to hold our hands and take pictures. At the dugout, the translators gave us information about the size of the village and how their water treatment center works. The teams filled buckets with dugout water to be used later for alum training. We also visited the home of the woman who runs the water treatment center! Visiting these villages was a great way to introduce the fellows to the work that has already been done by fellows and the CWS impact. It also helps them grasp the concepts they have been learning throughout orientation.
After lunch, all the translators joined their teams for training. First, the fellows completed their alum training. Alum is used as a coagulant in the CWS model to decrease the turbidity of the water, making it clear. The translators helped the fellows roll the alum into balls and swirl the alum in the dugout water collected earlier today. Tomorrow, when we check the water, it should be clear!
The fellows were then trained on household monitoring. Shak, Kristen, and Wahab acted out some typical monitoring situations. Shak should be an actor, he does a great old woman!!! The fellows then practiced household visits with their translators. With the remainder of the afternoon, the teams were taught some Dagbani phrases from their translators. Dagbani is the language spoken in Tamale and the villages! It was a long day, but just because we are all tired does NOT mean we can forget about New Year’s Eve! We will be going out in Tamale to celebrate! Happy New Year to all of you back in the States!
Name gaming outside in the morning’s cool weather before it heats up
Packed first day for all of us in Tamale! With a day behind in orientation we had to get right at it. We started the day with a classic name game– with 26 of us, late plane arrivals it was time to get to know each other!
A priceless picture of faces as Kristen goes into detail about water related diseases
We then headed inside to get down to the nitty gritty! Kristen and I gave presentations touching on the water crisis, water and disease, water interventions in the developing world, and finally, the ins and outs of CWS! Everyone had great questions and you could tell they were only getting more excited about getting out into the villages tomorrow to see it all first hand.
The entire crew before heading out on thier scavenger trip adventure!
After a lunch break, we revealed everyone’s teams! To get all the teams bonding quickly we sent them all out on a scavenger hunt through the market. Always a little daugnthing at first but always finishing with lots of laughs and great stories!! Following the scavenger hunt was dinner and the first meeting of each teams translator for the next three weeks. We celebrating the big reveal with a dance party. We brought in Tamale’s finest cultural dancers and danced the night away! Needless to say, we all had an awesome day and excited to get out into the field tomorrow! Keep posted for tomorrow’s adventure!
No more waiting in the airport for anyone! So happy to have our fellows all together!! Below is Sam, Peter & Kristen!
As of this evening, all 26 Winter Fellows have arrived safely in Accra! Despite a long couple of days of travel, and a few missing bags, the group is in great spirits and excited to start the Fellowship! Tomorrow morning, all of the Fellows and their leaders will hop on the bus and head up to Tamale. Everyone can’t wait to get to the Northern Region and officially begin orientation on Sunday!
-Kate
Below are some pics of some of our weary (and hungry!) travelers settling in and chowing down on some delicious pizza!!
The winter storm that made its way from the Midwest to the East Coast over the past few days has been no match for CWS! Despite a handful of flight delays and cancellations, all 26 of our Fellows have either arrived or are enroute to Accra. Saja, Alexa, Corrine, Iyi, Josh, Priya, Caroline, Linda, Sarah, Amanda, Vanessa, Jakob, Rachel and Urooj have all arrived safely in Ghana where they were met by Shak, Peter, Sam, and Kristen. Instead of heading upto Tamale tomorrow, this group will get a day to explore Accra while we wait for Lauren,, Casey, Chris, Emily, Gabriela, Jane, Jordan, Julia, Kara, Katie, Lindsay and Tyler to land on Friday. Then the whole group will take the bus to Tamale together on Saturday – a day later than originally planned, but a day that can easily be made up for later in our Fellowship schedule.
All of the Fellows have been very plucky travelers despite the frustrating delays. We can’t wait for them all to arrive in Ghana so the program can officially begin!
I’m sure that you all have been on the edge of your seats since Kathryn’s last post about CWS’ expansion! To recap: After a scouting trip to Liberia, Burkina Faso, and Togo last summer, Kathryn and I decided that for CWS’ first satellite office, there was really no place like home and began to focus our search on other Regions in Ghana. Kathryn spent the fall traveling around this beautiful country to learn about the water needs in the Upper East, Upper West, and Volta Regions as well as exploring more remote areas of the Northern Region. After months of moto, tro, and market bus rides to both big cities and rural villages throughout Ghana, we decided that the small city of Salaga, a seemed like the best fit for our next base of operations!
The river in Tunga – the village’s only source of drinking water.
Once we had selected Salaga as our potential new base of operations, the next step was to pilot a CWS water business in a nearby village! While we were fairly confident that both our water treatment technique and our business model would work well in this area, this pilot was essential in figuring out our supply chain and transportation logistics. As many of our past Fellows know, transportation is a huge challenge here in Ghana! With the very poor road conditions around Salaga, we knew that finding a reliable way to reach the rural villages would be difficult. As far as supplies go, Salaga is much, much smaller than Tamale with a very limited market. So, about 90% of our supplies will have to be shipped down from Tamale – a process that we knew little about. A few more trips around Salaga later, we picked the village of Tunga for our pilot.
Tunga, is a rural village of about 500 people located 40 minutes north of Salaga and right outside the larger town of Banjai. The only source of water in Tunga is a river, that is highly turbid and fecally contaminated. We met with the village chief and elders in early December and, after a great conversation, they agreed to work with us!
Our awesome building team after the first day of implementation: Kathryn, M’Azara, Peter, Mahamadu, Haruna, DJ Alhassan and me.
Both Kathryn and I had a blast working in Tunga over these past few weeks. I have not implemented a water business since we launched the Fellowship Program in June 2010 and Kathryn’s last implementation was when she was a Fellow almost 2 years ago! After some initial delays due to the election and some car trouble (typical!), the implementation process went very smoothly!
The finished polytank stand
The people in Tunga were extremely welcoming and a joy to work with – A group of local guys were very helpful in building the polytank stand and provided endless entertainment as we worked in the hot sun; An enthusiastic team of kids helped carry our safe storage containers all over the village as we distributed them to each family; And the women entrepreneurs, Sana and Aya, are a force to be reckoned with!
We celebrated opening day on Sunday, December 16th and were very impressed with the turnout! Sana and Aya were completely in charge, leaving Kathryn and I with little to do besides take pictures!
Opening day in Tunga!Sana selling water like a pro!Happy customers on their way home with full buckets of clean drinking waterOpening Day Success!
So far, the pilot in Tunga has been a success! Stay tuned for more updates on CWS’ expansion plans!
When I was grocery shopping in Tamale a few weeks ago, I came across a woman selling bread at a food stand with a banner written across the top that read, “To be a woman is not easy”. Almost all the shops in Tamale have storefront names with powerful and sometimes silly sayings such as this one. To give you some examples, “Everything by God”, “Serious Man Hot Food”, “Jesus Loves You Barber Shop” or “Home Sweet Home Kenkey”. The names usually make me chuckle but this one made me think.
Zenabu and her husband in Buhijaa
I immediately thought of the women entrepreneurs that run the water treatment centers in the CWS communities. They are the complete embodiment of this very shop name… to be a woman is not easy in the slightest, especially in a rural village outside of Tamale.
Posing for the camera with 40 L of water on her head! – Sakpalua
Lydia, one of the women who runs the water business in Sakpalua, recently talked to Spring 2012 fellow, Chelsea Hodgkins, about what it means to be a woman in Sakpalua versus a woman living in Tamale. “The women in the city have it easy”, Lydia told Chelsea. “In the village, the women go to their farms very early in the morning and then are expected to come home, take care of the children then clean and cook for the family”, she continued. After hearing snippets of their conversation, I wanted to hear more about the lives of the women who run the water businesses on top of farming and taking care of their families.
A woman making shea butter in Kpanayili
Right now is one of the busiest times of the year for subsistence farmers because it is the peak of the harvest season in the Northern Region of Ghana. After the rains, everyone wants to collect their crops before it gets too dry. Some farmers leave as early as 4:00 AM so they can start working in the morning while it’s still cool. Farmers harvest groundnuts, maize, yam, soy beans, cassava, hot peppers, okra, tomatoes, rice, firewood, tobacco, cotton and cow peas to name a few. Not to mention that when it stops raining, the weddings and funerals start in the North.
So how do the women who run the water businesses find the time or the incentives to sell water during the peak of the harvest season? Well, it’s complicated. For starters, people have run out of rainwater so the only option they have for clean water is treated water from the polytank. This means that the demand for clean water is there. And the incentive that drives many of the women to work at the centers is the same incentive that gets people to work at desk jobs back in the US, they want to make money to pay the bills. This monetary incentive has to be there because if women work at the centers strictly for the greater good of their communities, they will have no money to pay for aquatabs, broken parts or for the time they could have spent on their farms.
The beautiful Cheriba of Libi
But what happens when people in the communities are collecting water from different sources? This is where the plot thickens. In Kpanayili, the people in the community are collecting water for cooking, cleaning and washing at nearby wells and streams. They will get water from these sources until they dry and then they will go back to getting water at the dugout. As noted before, the women in the communities already have long days so if they can lessen their load by shortening the walk to get water, then they will do it in a heartbeat. The problem is that the water treatment center is next to the dugout. This is not the case in all CWS communities at this time but there are several that deal with challenges such as this during the transition from the rainy season to the dry season.
The new moved and improved water treatment center – Tacpuli
So how can we convince people to make the extra walk just for clean water, while we wait for these other sources to dry? It’s not easy. While it may seem like clean water should be high on the priority list, the reality is that it’s not for everyone. Farmers are focusing on their harvest and prioritizing food over clean water because this is their sustenance. Farming is how people survive. If that means drinking contaminated water for 2 weeks so that they do not have to walk as far and as a result get more time on their farms, then they’ll take the risk.
Kusumi and her new baby girl, Fatima – Manguli
In the long run, what will 2 weeks of diarrhea do if it means having more money for the family this year? If you asked this question to a public health official, they would answer A LOT. But the women working in these communities are not public health officials; they are simply trying to make their work as easy as possible. Because after all, to be a woman is not easy.
Today is World Toilet Day! This meant nothing to me about a year and half ago. “World Toilet Day? Why on earth would we celebrate this? Wahoo! I have a toilet?” Now that I frequent Ghana, it takes a whole new meaning. I now have first hand experience of Ghana’s very different toilet situation.
In the more urban areas there is a lot of open sewage which makes for some interesting smells (*insert gag). But also the public toilets are less than desireable when “taking care of business”. You pay someone about 10 cents to use an un-maintenanced toilet. To be honest, I would rather just do my business openly.
In the more rural areas that Community Water Solutions does it’s work, the “toilet” situation hits an all time low. Here are the two scenarios. Poo scenario: Open defecation/Bush of your choice. Pee scenario: concrete slab with a drain. This concrete slab with a drain is in a mud hut located within their compound that is used not only for showering but urinating as well. Just to give you a visual… a compound is about 4-7 huts hosting about 8 people; typically there is a man of the household, 1-2 of his wives, and kids galore. All 8 of these people urinate in one of these huts and the urine escapes through a drain which goes right into the footpath of the village. It makes us really grateful to think that in much more developed countries like ours, we have companies like FS Drainage to maintain our drainage and keep our drains clear from blockage. Fortunately, the professionals can quickly diagnose the problem and can provide solutions at a budget-friendly price. Moreover, the specialists can allow us to get guaranteed drain cleaning relief. Additionally, by providing drain unclogging services, the professionals happen to ensure that all our sewage and waste is never in close contact with us again.
Many a time we are doing our household to household monitoring, stomping through this pee. Kids playing, stomping through this pee. People with no shoes, stomping through this pee. (*insert gag). It is the only option they have and though it makes sense for them, its not doing much to control their contact with urine.
In fact, at times, the pipes clog as a result of the poor drainage systems, and water begins to pool on the surface. These occurrences may cause a slew of issues for the people who live in the house or neighborhood. In that situation, locals could directly look for the specialists comparable to Water Damage Restoration Experts in Ghana. The reason is that, while toilet clogs may appear to be a minor issue, they can lead to a variety of diseases, infections, and discomfort for a large number of people.
But water is just one step.
Now more than ever we need to get portable toilet hire companies and other waterworks businesses on board to improve the current situation.
So, come on, join the celebration of your toilet and increase the awareness of sanitation. Because that’s what we’ll be doing!
For more info on how to get involved go to http://www.worldtoiletday.org/
CWS Co-Founders Kate and Chuck with Ben Powell from Innova(SUN) (Not Pictured: Ben’s Teammate Mark)
The Innova(Sun) team is made up of Fellow Alumni, Ben Powell and Mark Moeremans. Despite Mark being stuck in Europe for work and having to join the pitch via teleconfernece, the Innova(Sun) team did an incredible job of presenting their idea for solar-powered electronics charging businesses that will provide CWS villages with access to electricity.
Over the next year, Mark and Ben will be working with me and my co-mentor, Chuck, to develop a plan for piloting Innova(Sun) in a CWS village. Thanks to our amazing competition sponsors, Goodwin Proctor, Wolf Greenfield, and Foley Hoag, Innova(Sun) has $10,000 of funding for their pilot!
The Social Enterprise Competition Finalists!
The Innova(Sun) pitch wasn’t the only great presentation at the competition finals. Kelsey & Zoe from Waste-to-Wealth, and Michelle & Alex from GroundNUTrition did an amazing job pitching their social enterprise ideas! I helped to moderate the final judging session, so I know that it was extremely difficult for the judges to pick only 1 winner. As mentors, Chuck and I are so proud of how far each of these teams have come over the past 11 weeks!
Finally, I would like to thank our judges: Una Ryna, Matt Tarditi, Vanessa Green and Mike Pomianek! As Innova(Sun) works to develop their pilot plan they will be writing a series of post on the CWS Blog. Make sure to check it out if you are interested in following their progress!
