what i've been up to...

Well I imagine many of you are wondering what I have been doing here aside from taking pictures of elephants, avoiding bicycles, and talking with people in their underwear.

First off, I want to thank everyone sincerely for all your hard work and generosity in fundraising. I especially want to thank our sponsors for being so generous in their donations, particularly our leading sponsors Western’s Faculty of Engineering and J-AAR excavating. Please visit our EWB Western sponsorship page at www.uwo.ewb.ca/sponsors.htm to view a complete list of all our donors. This project is creating some good outcomes in livelihoods of many people in Ghana, and everyone should be proud of their involvement. I also want to thank my wonderful wife Erin for allow me to play my small role in this project.

I am currently working with the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) on the Northern Region Water and Sanitation Project (NORWASP) out of Tamale in Northern Ghana. The NORWASP project is funded by CIDA and is a rural water project aimed at villages of 2000 people or less. The project works in 4 parts:

• Implementation of a clean water source - through the drilling of boreholes or hand dug wells,
• Community capacity building through formation of water and sanitation committees that contribute 5% towards the cost of the borehole. This also includes basic business training in order for them to create a pump maintenance fund so they are prepared for pump break downs,
• Sanitation and hygiene education, and
• Waste management through latrine construction.

The project aims to improve the health of the rural communities affected by the lack of potable water and adequate sanitation facilities. Wardrop is the Canadian Executing Agency and is in charge of running the project, as part of the CIDA funding this is a tied aid issue that is very interesting and highlights some of the complexity of development. But this is a discussion for another day.

One component of my work here is to assess the status and try to determine the impact of the project by communicating with key stakeholders such as local government, partner NGOs, and the communities themselves. In the six weeks that I have been in Ghana I have devoted my time to working with Community Water and Sanitation Agency to get a feel for their interoffice dynamics and how they implement their projects. During this time they have sent me to the field twice for just over two weeks to do some on the ground monitoring and I will be going back out to another district next week. During these field visits I have interviewed key stakeholders at all levels (District Water and Sanitation Team members, Partner Organisations {NGOs}, District Assemblies {local governments}, local community members and water and sanitation team members within the communities, area pump mechanics and latrine artisans). I have also supervised POs in delivering training to communities and monitored their day-to-day functioning.

The CWSA is very stretched in its capability to do regular monitoring of every district and are eager to hear back on findings actually from the field. Typically their information from the field comes from actual stakeholders like the NGOs that work for them so they really appreciate an outside and impartial view of the interactions within the project. I hope that I have brought a different perspective to the project. Since I have not been involved in any portion of the project I have been able to examine each section objectively and ask questions on why the project has developed into what it is today. I have been reporting to CWSA and the Canadian Team leader regularly and they direct me in areas they think that should be investigated further. I have also spent some time compiling basic data for NORWASP that will be analyzed further and is used to make sure all communities selected actually have their water source or are planned to get it. I have also stayed in a village for four days to better observe their everyday life and the affect of the project on their activities (i.e. conformance to good hygiene practices, effect of saved time on community, etc.) and have reported these findings back to CWSA. This type of longer term (although really quite short) is typically not done by CWSA and the information acquired was really useful. The past week and a half, I have met with other NGOs and project funders in the water sector to compare what they are doing in delivering their projects (i.e. World Vision, Water Vision, CLIP, OIC, EU project, AFD project, Guinea Worm eradication project and a few others).

As a result of the experiences that I have completed thus far I am still trying to figure out what area I can best try and provide some sort of sustainable impact. The information that I am providing the CWSA and NORWASP now is great to work out problems that arise while I am hear but if after August systems are not set up to deal with them internally then it is not so good. I have thought a few areas where I hope to have at least a little longer-term impact:

• Work with CWSA to improve their internal monitoring of projects at the ground level and highlight the importance of having someone on the ground to check up on program implementation.
• Work with District Water and Sanitation Teams to develop their capacity to monitor and develop POs and report to CWSA. Specifically, improve their ability to improve latrine completion rates in their districts.
• Work with specific POs to develop their ability to deliver more effective training or improve their planning and report writing skills.

The CWSA is the long-term key stakeholder in the delivery and maintenance of safe water and improved health at least in Northern Ghana; if I can make even a small change with them it could have a good impact on delivery more water to more communities.

Overall the biggest impact thus far is the one on me. I have learned a bunch about how development, development policies and actual implementation on the ground. I have had a chance to see it from the sides of the donor agency, the project leader/executing agency, local government, local NGOs and international NGOs. As well as to learn about what the actual beneficiaries of these projects think and how they think they should develop. Overall it has been an eye opening and great learning experience and I hope that I can make some sort of impact in the sort time I have left and bring back as much as possible to start and affect change back home.

Hope this answers a few questions.

Take care and God Bless,

Jason