Blue Skies Ghana Project 2012/13

The Blue Skies Ghana Project 2012/13 will support a poor community in Ghana with a facility which is likely to be a bore hole, KVIP Latrine, Clinic or Electricity Generator. We are looking increasingly likely to support a bore hole project which will produce 2 bore holes for a the Krabokesse community in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The cost of the boreholes is likely to be around £7000 and may change depending on the exchange rate. 

You can read about our previous program in Ghana - the Budukwaa Program and also about Blue Skies who we work with to implement the projects.

Above: Some KVIP Latrines in Techiman, Ghana, Africa

The facility will really help relieve the communities' poverty through improving health, the economy, quality of life and so on. For example a bore hole providing clean water and sanitation to communities can be very cost effective, reducing illness, improving education and gender equality, and can help stimulate the economy. It also costs around only £5 per person for life (compared to tens of thousands of pounds in the UK).

The communities are poor communities which often need items like electricity, clean water, sanitation, health care, education, road infrastructure and jobs.

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About the Communities

The community will likely be in and around Nsawam or further out to the Central Regions in Ghana. Community members in these areas we are looking at work in the plantations which supply the Blue Skies factory. The community members there are very happy, especially because of the opportunity to work in the plantations which provides them with a pleasant amount of work and pay. The farms are hand farmed, using agronomists to produce the best possible quality of fruit like pineapple and mango, the freshness of which is kept to your local supermarkets in the UK, by exporting daily by air freight.

Some communities are rural, and are poorer than their more heavily populated counterparts. The Budukwaa village where we built a community centre previously was such a village, with a population of around 1000, where most people lived in mud houses amid dense green foliage. The village was without basic amenities such as clean water and electricity. One particular problem was that buildings were unfortunately regularly eroded by rains. As a result communities had requested drainage facilities to be built in the centre.

Typically the communities are without amenities such as clean water, sanitation, electricity and healthcare, however Ghana is one of Africa's few success stories in education. There is over 80% enrolment in primary and secondary schools and therefore some communities have schools. However some villages are without schools and there is a need to provide school buildings which the government will supply with school meals and teachers. As a result the Blue Skies Foundation who are managing the program aim to provide such amenities in the communities. Below is a picture of some community members with Dr Julia Piper, a foundation trustee.

There are some more photos of similar communities on the blog produced by the Sheffield based Yewlands schools at http://yewfosglobal.edublogs.org/. You can see even more photos of such communities on our Photo Tour of the Ghana Program.

The population in the communities in Ghana tends to be very friendly and there is little crime as it is not tolerated by the people there. When we visited, the people were generally kind and appreciative, and those who had jobs at Blue Skies were pleased to have them.

Most people in the communities live in mud huts and eat local foods such as fufu. The more rural villages were quieter with many young children around, and occasionally there was a bore hole or KVIP latrines but they weren't present consistently. The rural villages were overseen by chiefs who we met and negotiated with in our Budukwaa project. In the slightly larger conurbations there were bustling markets, people in the streets carrying and selling bread, the colours were often a mix of lush green foliage, with dirt roads, and small mud or wooden buildings, however the colours people wore were often bright and vivid, it was humid and hazy.

The capital of Ghana is Accra, and has the nations only major airport. Road networks and buildings are rare in many communities outside of the capital and the communities are generally made of mud and dirt, where drivers drive on both sides of the road to avoid enormous potholes. Motoring accidents are frequent, everyone knows how to fix a broken down car. Death is common in Ghana which suffers more from Malaria but not so much from HIV/AIDS. There are many funerals. People are happy when there are jobs and there is income to feed their families. Where there is power there are frequent blackouts.

The communities work with the Blue Skies Foundation to put forward proposals for programs that they need. They also work to ensure that proposals will be of benefit to the communities, and will be sustained and used into the future. The communities have as much input into each program as possible. The programs requested and funded by the Foundation for Community Inspiration will be programs the communities have chosen, and which are considered to be effective at ending poverty such as clean water and sanitation.

Benefits

A bore hole would significantly reduce death and illness in a community and allow the community to be healthier, fitter to work, and also encourage education and improve gender equality as women for example would not have to spend hours walking miles to fetch buckets of water.

A bore hole will provide clean water and sanitation which would change peoples lives by reducing illness and death. You can read about the huge number of beneficial effects that clean water and sanitation have on our clean water and sanitation page, all of which can change lives. The benefits of sponsoring a beneficial business might be based around the fact that the business produces for the community and brings money into the community. 

Evaluation

Blue Skies (who we encourage you to read about via the link provided), and who we have successfully completed the Budukwaa Program with (which you should also read about), would manage the project through their foundation, and ensure that the project is completed, is sustainable and that everything is conducted with integrity. Blue Skies would initially select projects from its network of community leaders, in local villages. The program would be selected based on community leaders completing an application through a project leader and the foundation manager. Although some Blue Skies Foundation projects benefit the company itself we will look to make sure that projects we support directly benefit communities. Additionally we would look to value the program based on community testimonials.

The Blue Skies foundation council assess applications considering issues such as sustainability and impact, ensuring that proposed programs are maintained after completion and have an impact on a suitably large number of persons. Having chosen programs for funding, and interacting with program managers for plans, funds are passed on to contractors, of which a minimum of three are assessed for tender, initially at no more than 10% of the overall project cost until the program is successfully completed.