The northern regional chapter of the Ghana WASH Alliance, a member of the International WASH Alliance, has convened a meeting to review the activities of its members in projects funded by partners through the alliance for the year 2016.
The meeting which had members present how far they have gone with their planned activities for the first six months of the year, also revealed some of the problems that needed attention in the Water Sanitation and Hygiene sector in the region.
The Ghana WASH Alliance receives proposals from members every year on critical issues bothering on the WASH sector in communities they operate in the northern region.
The proposals are then submitted to donor partners with defense from the alliance after which funding is released for implementation.
Most of the members who made presentations had done almost half of the activities they planned for the year leaving the other half to be carried out in the second half.
Members carried out activities in areas such as ODF triggering of communities, waste water recycling for reuse, latrine credit facilitation, irrigation and organic compost exercises for farmers, women empowerment, training of artisans in constructing household latrines, facilitating trainings for school health teachers and community empowerment in terms of providing them with the right information to make demands on basic community amenities like water and sanitation facilities from duty bearers.
Other activities members engaged in for the first half of the year are sensitization on various good practices in ensuring the achievement of proper WASH in the region, provision of basic WASH facilities to communities and institutions as well as training them on fund raising activities for the facilities’ maintenance.
Convener of the review meeting on behalf of the WASH Alliance Country Coordinator, also Monitoring and Evaluation officer for the WASH Alliance, Mr. Michael Tia Adjei expressed satisfaction with how far members of the alliance have come with their implementation activities for the year.
He however charged members to think beyond implementing and abandoning projects without proper follow up to ascertain the general impacts of the work done.
He said “as a Monitoring and Evaluation person, I am particular about follow ups on the work we have done to see what impact it has on the people and also inform ourselves on the next line of action”.
Chairman for the WASH Alliance steering committee, Mr. John Aduakye admonished members to look at other ways of raising funds such as partnering the private sector to support their activities.
Some members recounted their experiences in dealing with financial institutions that have WASH as part of their operations.
According to them, even those institutions with credit facilities for investments in the WASH sector, are not attracted to how the NGO credit works because of the small amount of interest charged for legal reasons of nonprofit operations.
Mr. Aduakye However encouraged them to look beyond only financial institutions and their ventures for profit.
He said other private companies may be interested in supporting the activities of members not for profit, but as part of their corporate social responsibilities, which was agreed by the WASH Monitoring and Evaluation officer, Mr. Michael Tia Adjei and all members.
The next review meeting as moved and seconded through a consensus, takes place in three months which will be the next quarter.
WUZDA Ghana 