Santa Dabsilei (Sanitation Day) in Tolon!

In September, 2010, a revised Environmental Sanitation Policy for Ghana was produced. The overall goal of this new policy is to develop a clean and nationally-accepted vision of environmental sanitation as an essential social service and a major determinant for improving health and quality of life in Ghana. The policy is a necessary tool required to help shape all efforts in dealing with the overwhelming challenges of poor sanitation in the country.

Following similar initiatives by some African countries such as Liberia, Nigeria, Cameroon and Sierra Leone among others, the Local Government Ministry with the Vice President, together with some eminent chiefs of Ghana in the last quarter of 2014 launched the National Sanitation Day to be observed on the first Saturday of every month across the country. The intention of this day is to encourage public participation in cleaning the environment. This will ensure good sanitation practices and prevent some sanitation related diseases (such as cholera) among other health risks caused by bad sanitation in the country.

Following this national policy and as a development-oriented team, NFED Tolon Cohort 3 are working on livelihood empowerment projects under the auspices of International Citizen Service to support Income Generating Groups (IGGs) to acquire sustainable income generating sources. They have taken the initiative of educating young people in Tolon on some sanitation-related illnesses such as malaria and cholera, focusing mostly on the causes and preventive measures. This engaged a lot of young people, children and the community as a whole.

NFED TOLON TEAM EDUCATING PARTICIPANTS ON CHOLERA AND MALARIA PREVENTION

The NFED Tolon team kicked off August, 2016 celebrating Ghana’s National Sanitation Day, which takes place on the first Saturday of every month. In a dazzling performance of drama, music and dance we conveyed the importance of keeping our environments clean to the children of Tolon.  Our performance focused on the prevention of illnesses like cholera, dysentery and malaria.

Utilising a combination of English and Dagbani (thanks to our multilingual team member Rafia) we presented a role-play, a poem on malaria prevention and a choreographed song to highlight the importance of washing our hands!

The play was in two acts. In the first act we portrayed an unhygienic family preparing food in an unclean manner- without washing their hands or cleaning the kitchen, spitting, sneezing and then sleeping without a mosquito net. The second act showed a similar family this time taking all the proper precautions. We made sure to emphasise the importance of using soap and sleeping under a treated mosquito net to our audience before reciting a poem on the prevention of malaria written by a keen member of our team, Agartha and performed with EO.

TEAM MEMBERS RECITING A POEM

Last but certainly not least, the BIG FINALE was a show stopping performance of a popular Ghanaian jingle on washing your hands. The whole team got involved in a song and dance armed with actual soap bars! Even the kids got involved!

All in all our first community engagement in Tolon on sanitation was a really positive and fun experience. We are already planning the next one, don’t miss it!☺