Tap Water Turns the Tide by Steve White

I, Jackie, would like to turn over the reigns of this blog to Steve for the day. He is the winner of the Raise Money Right chocolate selling contest. He and his mom are on the delegation and have been great members of the team. Steve’s mom is a nurse and has loads of questions about the health programs we are visiting. Steve is rising freshman at MIT who spends lots of time reading and thinking about development issues. This is his report from the field:

If you visit a health clinic they will tell you not to drink tap water in developing countries like Ghana. I’d like to say that, unfortunately, “the glass is at least half empty” for most of the people here, especially in the North, but in a place where tap water is a public health risk, maybe it is an inappropriate analogy….

We visited a local school and nearby health clinic in the Bolga region. The school and community are beneficiaries of food, health, and sanitation programs funded by U.S.A.I.D. and C.R.S.

Most of the programs have yielded obvious benefits. The food aid programs, such as daily school lunches, are providing an incentive for parents to send children to the schools, yielding improved attendance. Monthly food rations of 5 KG of bulgur wheat, in particular, are contributing to increased enrollment of young girls. Community participation, through oversight committees and small financial contributions, serves as an effective anti-corruption mechanism.

A bore hole, financed mainly by CRS, but partially by the community, is providing suitably clean water for the community, reducing incidence of water-borne illnesses. Women have more time for other chores since they no longer have to walk between two and three kilometers (each way) to fetch a bucket of water. The nearby health clinic provides immunizations, such as a polio vaccination and TDAP, for local children, serves pregnant women with prenatal care, and is staffed by a nurse and several community health workers.

The good news is that compared to other impoverished areas, this community is rather fortunate. It is starting to make progress on eliminating hunger, preventable disease, and poor sanitation and has effectively reached the goal of universal primary education. More than one billion people live in worse conditions.

The bad news is that it will continue to face hurdles in the future without more aid. The school is understaffed and many teachers are untrained. Despite each schoolchild being feed a daily meal, many of the children have nothing to eat when they get home, leading to a prevalence of hunger and malnutrition. Furthermore, USAID is phasing out funding in the region later next year, with, theoretically, the Ghanaian government providing new food security services to replace the old programs. There are a few reasons to believe, hesitantly, the transition will go smoothly, but most of the people in this community, and others, seem to fear it.

Fortunately some of these problems can easily be solved, with smart investments, advocacy in the United States, and diplomatic pressure on the Ghanaian government not to leave its northern people behind. The next steps, such as improving infrastructure, making market reforms, and providing opportunities for secondary education, may be difficult, but the recent surge in focus on international development should give everyone optimism about the slowly improving situation.

To reuse a slightly inappropriate metaphor: whether the glass is half empty or half full in this village, the tap is clearly flowing, at times sporadically, maybe too slowly, but clearly flowing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 and is filed under Beyond Fair Trade, Sustainability . You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Tap Water Turns the Tide by Steve White”

1. Brian Backe Says:
   August 8th, 2007 at 4:48 am

   Steve - thank you for your thoughtful and well-written blog posting…. I would love to hear how the trip impacted you at a personal level some point? What thoughts do you have about ways we can help other college students get involved in this mission even if they can not go to Ghana? many thanks…

   Brian Backe, CRS Director of Domestic Programs

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