This spring, Community Water Solutions’ Executive Director, was invited to speak at Middlebury’s TEDx Conference. The theme of the conference was “The Road Not Taken” and Kate spoke about the changes in her career path that led her to Ghana and then told the story of CWS’ trials in buying a truck in order to reach more areas of Ghana. Check out her inspirational talk below!
Community Water Solutions has some EXCITING NEWS….
This morning we launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo in an effort to raise funds for our expansion in Ghana! For more details, check out our beautiful new video featuring Salamatu, one of the woman entrepreneurs in Chani, and considering supporting our cause!
A HUGE thanks to Phil Wall for directing and producing Salamatu’s Story, Lucy Parker Randall for capturing such beautiful photographs and videos of our work in Ghana, and Pete Seibert for composing the most perfect score for this video! You guys rock our world!
Peter and Wahab monitor the water treatment center in Kpachiyili. This is a typical center placement. It’s located right next to the dugout. Look at how green it is! This picture was taken during the rainy season, as you can see not flooded!
The placement of the CWS water treatment center is key in running a successful water business. Fellows and CWS translators ask very specific questions when it comes to finding a spot for the polytank. The villagers select where they want their water treatment center based on what dugout or water source they use for the majority of the year and look for an area that does not flood during the rainy season.
But what happens to the water business when a dugout dries up or when people use multiple water sources throughout the year?
In some villages, the women entrepreneurs figure it out for themselves. Adamu and Salamatu in Gariezegu found a metal, moveable polytank stand that was used in the school, which allowed them to move the water treatment center to various wells in the village. After the rainy season, Lasinchi and Mariama in Tacpuli moved the center to a well that was closer to the village and placed the polytank on large branches, using a hose to fill safe storage containers. For the most part though, the women who run the centers have a hard time coping with seasonal transitions on their own.
The chairman in Gariezegu posing with the metal polytank stand.
The CWS policy for moving water businesses in the past has been that the women have the freedom to move the centers as long as they come up with the materials to build polytank stands themselves. CWS wants the centers to be as self-reliant as possible. If we continually help the water businesses to thrive off of our dime, then they will not be sustainable in the long run. But where is the line drawn? We’re realizing on the monitoring side that there is a monetary limit to what we can ask of the women. It costs roughly $38 to build a polytank stand in Ghana. This is more money than most women make in a month working at the water treatment center.
It’s time to start building polytank stands! We’ve decided that by building polytank stands for communities that use multiple water sources, this will take a large burden off of the women who run the water treatment centers. So far we’ve mapped out 11 communities that will need polytank stands built at another source in the next 6 months: Bogu, Djelo, Gbandu, Gbung, Kpalbusi, Kpanayili, Tacpuli, Tohinaayili, Yapalsi, Yipela and Zanzagu Yipela. The communities will still be responsible for moving the polytank and blue drums to the new location when they need to (and making decisions about when to move it) but CWS will fund the building.
Polytank Stand Building 101 with Shak
Our first stop is Djelo, as their water source situation poses the largest threat to the community. The dugout where the center was initially built is starting to dry. The women, Zelia and Fuseina, predict that the dugout will be dry within the month. Luckily, there is another dugout a little farther away that will not dry up. This weekend CWS field staff, Shak and Amin, went to Djelo to build a polytank stand at this second dugout. We wanted to get the stand built before the dugout dried, to make the transition as smooth as possible. This will not cause any behavioral disruption because the villagers of Djelo are going to start going to that second dugout very soon.
Djelo’s plentiful, second dugout.
The stand in Djelo is complete!
The CWS technology in Ghana will only work if there is water to treat. The water businesses will be most successful if they are located next to the water source that the villagers use the most. If that source changes throughout the year, then the center needs to change with it. More updates to come as we continue to build!
After two weeks of training and saying farewell to some pretty awesome fellows, I have officially started as Ghana Country Director. It feels so good to be back with CWS! With the 6 newly implemented villages, CWS now has 38 villages in its monitoring rotation. Once the fellows leave, CWS continues to monitor its villages. This includes checking in with the wonderful ladies that run the water treatment centers, as well as doing household visits and taking water samples. Post-implementation, each new village is monitored once a week for the first 6 months and then less and less as the villages become self-sustainable.
It is the start of the rainy season here in the Northern Region of Ghana, which means that many of the villages (that have tin roofs) are transitioning into using rainwater collection techniques to harvest water with their safe storage containers. This is because some villages (like Gbung and Zanzugu Yipela) do not use their dugouts during the rainy season. While sales at the water treatment centers have been low in many of these communities that harvest rainwater, they will pick right back up when the dry season comes underway. As for now, the CWS staff in Ghana is just trying to stay dry with all the rain!
-Brianan
Shak cheesin’ with some kiddos in Wambong & Wahab keeping dry during a storm!Happy 4th of July! — a boy in the village of Cheko shows off his American and clean water pride!The children in Nyamaliga can’t get enough camera action!Rainy season, means rice harvesting! A family in Tacpuli poses with their full bucket of clean water.
Hudson and Ben enjoying the CWS Sundowners tradition
Our fearless fellowship leaders Hudson and Ben, arrived in Tamale yesterday – and with that, the Fellowship Program has officially begun! The boys have a 1.5 day leadership training program before they hop on the bus with Shak and Peter to head back down to Accra where they will meet the Fellows. We’re all so excited for the program to get started!
I can’t believe its been a year. A year already? A year only?!
Volunteering with Community Water Solutions this year was an experience that I am struggling to summarize. I could go by those landmark successes (and failures):
– Opening days in SIXTEEN communities = great success!
– Pushing the CWS truck down the Kumasi road = huge fail!
But I think it’s those ordinary days that have defined this year for me. I’ve been lucky to be able to hit the road most (earlyyyy) mornings with five incredibly hard-working and altruistic guys. Peter, Shak, Wahab, TJ and Amin made up our Tamale full-time field staff this year, and without them, well, I would be unintelligible in our villages. But their job is much more than translating. They wheedle information about problems out of reluctant housewives, they teach kids how to push taps without breaking them and give presentations to their classrooms, they take it personally when a house has misused a safe storage container, they charge community cellphones at their houses, switch farming tips, stories and food with the local men and women and kids, and they are the face of CWS to the communities they work with. I’m just lucky that I got to be part of such an ace team.
It’s not just the CWS posse that has impressed me daily. The ladies we work with in every village never cease to surprise me. Some are grandmothers and some are unmarried girls. Some work farms, others roadside food stops. All support their families and their communities without giving it a thought. Of course, the profits from the business are a great incentive to keep them going, but the actions and words of the ladies we work with have led me to believe that, for most, profits are only part of the reason they continue their work. The importance of community well-being here is something that I have rarely found so highly valued elsewhere in the world.
This year has certainly been one of great change for CWS. We have expanded rapidly, and the way we follow up in the places that we work has changed with this expansion. Figuring out how to optimize our time and resources and figuring out what ways monitoring is most effective were the twin challenge for me this year. Communicating our findings to a broader, international audience lead to ghanawaters.crowdmap.com in addition to topical blog posts. We also managed to successfully incorporate local government participation into our projects, and many villages are now nominated by their districts to partner with CWS. In retrospect, our growing pains were minimal; making water accessible to thousands more has yet to feel trying, and when you put it that way, how could it?
Of course, none of this would be possible without the amazing fellows we have had roll through our Tamale office, and a huge perk of this job was being able to work with so many talented, energetic and creative students and young professionals. Thank you fellows; keep in touch and keep your villages close to your hearts.
“Who is more dirty?” – my favorite game to play
Luckily I don’t have to say my goodbyes just yet, but leaving this week is still bittersweet. Its wonderful to know that a competent group, headed by new Country Directer Brianan Kiernan, will be able to take over operations once I’m out. But it’s very sad to think that I won’t spend my mornings hanging off the back of a moto. I’ll have to console myself with a fat American hamburger – thats right – its time to leave the chicken and rice behind, if only for a while!
This June, Brianan Kiernan will be joining the CWS Team as the new volunteer Ghana Country Director. We are so thrilled to have Brianan as a part of our team and think that she is going to do an amazing job managing our operations in Ghana! For all you Bostonians out there, Brianan will be running the Boston Marathon today, so be on the look-out for her! GO BRIANAN!
-Kate
CWS' new Ghana Country Director, Brianan Kiernan!
Let me just start off by saying that I am thrilled to join the CWS team in Ghana this upcoming June as the Ghana Country Director! It has been only three months since I participated in the CWS fellowship program and I could not be more excited to get back.
In May, I will be graduating from Boston College with a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies with a focus in Economics. I have always had an interest in international development and social justice but was unsure of how I would fit into the mix.
After participating in the Community Water Solutions Fellowship program this winter, I realized that I belong in the field! In my studies, I have seen the statistics, read the theories and learned about international and non-governmental organizations. So it was amazing to finally get to see the application of development work that organizations like CWS provide and the positive results that come of it.
Opening day in Kpachiyilli, the village where Brianan and her team worked this winter
Working with the women, Mariama and Azara, from the village of Kpachiyili, reminded me of our common humanity on this one planet that we all share. On our last day in Kpachiyili, Azara left my team with some words of wisdom. She said that all of the work we have done for her village, Kpachiyili, has had great, positive results. But she added that we should not forget about Kpachiyili when we return home. We need to tell people of our experiences and about the people in this village. When we leave, we must remember.
Upon returning to Boston, Azara’s words have stuck with me in thinking about her village but also in thinking about the people in this world who do not have access to basic necessities like clean drinking water. This June, when I return to work with CWS, I am looking forward to ensuring that the CWS water businesses remain sustainable for the 20,000 people who have been given a safe water source. I am so happy to be apart of CWS and I cannot wait to get started!
-Brianan
Brianan with her Fellowship Team in Kpachiyilli this winter
All four 2012 Spring Fellows have safely arrived in Accra!
The Gang's All Here! Sam, Chelsea, Colleen, Rich and Nick at Chez Lien Guest house in Accra.
The group is resting up for their VERY early (4:45am) wake up call tomorrow! They’ll catch the first bus out of Accra and after 12 (ish) hours of fun, will arrive in Hot Tamale. After some downtime in Accra, the Fellows, Sam, and Shak are itching to get started on their Fellowship work. The rest of us at CWS are so excited for this awesome team!!
World Water Day was last Thursday, and around the world people concerned with the global water crisis gathered together to celebrate all the positive water-y work that’s being done! To see some examples and learn a bit more about global water problems and solutions, check out waterday.org!
Here in Tamale we had our own celebration! 45 of the ladies and men we work along side joined us in Tamale for some finger-lickin’ chicken n’ rice, minerals (soft drinks) and, naturally, some good old-fashioned CLEAN water! It was wonderful to get these ladies together to listen to some reggae, watch the latest Ghanian soap opera and chat about our businesses around Northern Region!
CWS celebrated World Water Day with our longest running partners, from Cheko and Jerigu.... . . and our newest ones!
Did you and your friends miss World Water Day? No problem, here are some tips to conserve water around the house and make every day a water day! And of course, you can always support CWS efforts through Global Giving.
We are very excited to announce the two awesome Fellowship Leaders that will be helping us run the 2012 Summer Fellowship Program: Ben Powell and Hudson Cavanaugh! We are so happy to have these two guys join our team this June – the Summer Fellows are going to be in great hands! Without further ado, meet Ben and Hudson:
There’s a good chance you’ll see some Virginia gear around the CWS office this summer, since Kate and I are both Wahoos! I was born and raised in Austin, Texas, and am now Fourth Year at UVa. I’ll be graduating this May with a degree in Computer Science, and am so excited and honored to be given the opportunity to return to Ghana as a Fellowship Leader this summer.
Ben back in June 2010 in Wambong.
It’s been nearly two years since I traveled to Ghana as part of CWS’s first Fellowship team, and I’ve been able to tell that the Fellowship Program has changed quite a bit since my Fellowship Program in Summer 2010! My team consisted of five people instead of four, and we were the only CWS Fellowship team in Ghana that summer. Peter and Shak worked closely with us to help my team open CWS’s 7th water business, located in Wambong. The World Cup was on TV just about every night we were there, and we adjusted our schedules whenever possible to see either Ghana or the United States play a match. You can imagine how much fun it was when the two teams actually played against each other in the Round of 16!
Since my Fellowship, CWS has expanded to 35 villages, changed offices, and hired several full-time staff members and fellowship translators. When I heard CWS added the Fellowship Leader position, I was excited and anxious to return to Ghana to play a bigger role in an organization that has not only affected me personally but also 20,000 Ghanaians who now have a permanent, safe source of drinking water. Watching CWS grow has been fascinating, and I’m convinced that the CWS model not only works locally but is sustainable, which is a key attribute of successful global development. I can’t wait to be a part of the growth this summer as CWS expands to even more villages.
I couldn’t be happier to return to Ghana with the new Fellows and be a part of the Summer 2012 Fellowship Program. I will never forget my experience in Ghana two years ago, and cannot wait to see what the Summer 2012 Fellowship has in store. Enjoy the next few months, and see ya’ll in June!
-Ben
It has been less than a year since I’ve been back from Tamale working with Community Water Solutions, but I’m eager to go back. I’m a rising junior at Middlebury College with a major in Political Science and Latin American Studies and, after the CWS program is over, I will be working with an organization called Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), a student founded group dedicated to lowering the price of life saving drugs by working with research universities across the United States.
Hudson with his teammates Sharifa and Ianthe braving the rough village roads in Shak's Jeep (with the usual swarm of kids!)
The reason I’m proud to be working with CWS is not just all the incredible people I’ve met through CWS, but because the structure of the fellowship program accomplishes two important goals: it creates sustainable clean water projects around Tamale that provide clean water to entire communities, and it helps create waves of informed, responsible global citizens who I hope will go on to do great things. I believe it is our responsibility to be aware of our privilege and use the power and access that circumstance has given us to fight against global injustice such as extreme poverty and lack of access to clean water. One way I intend to do that is by working to ensure that this year’s fellowship program is safe, fun and, hopefully, as impactful as my own fellowship program.Ben and I are going to do our best to make sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible throughout the program. If any of you have any concerns, questions, or simply want to trade some emails, please feel free to shoot me an email at [email protected] I’m looking forward to meeting all of you!
