31% of the schools in Ghana do not have proper sanitation facilities.
This is often the result of a confluence of systemic failures in and outside the school.
For example, the Ajumako-Techiman Catholic School, which has about 420 students, had unsanitary pit latrines, due to off-hours intrusion by members of the surrounding community of roughly 4,000. “The whole community has only one public toilet and that is putting pressure on the school’s toilet” explained head teacher Vincent Afadzi. The latrines had never been emptied and were so malodorous that students refused to use them. One learner explained that when students use the dirty toilets, the stench stays with them, and they feel embarrassed in front of their teachers.
We don’t want to come here because of the bad smell.
The school’s Parent-Teacher Association struggled to raise enough funds to maintain the facilities and did not keep records of financial contributions. The school received little or no support from the local district government and struggled with water shortage during the dry season.
In response to the situation, the Rotary-USAID partnership replaced the school’s old pit latrines with a microflush toilet system, a novel technology that uses a small amount of hand-washing water to flush the toilet. The excreta goes into an underground biodigester that creates compost. To save water, the program introduced into the school tippy taps, simple and cost-effective handwashing station built from local materials. The partnership also provided the school with a manual borehole, which was then upgraded to a mechanized system.
For me, the key to sustainability is to secure community buy-in. We should listen to beneficiaries and understand what their actual needs and circumstances are. Together we can decide what the best solutions are and make an informed decision, rather than deciding for them.
The 2019 WASH Sustainability Index retrospective assessment of the pilot phase projects in Ghana found that seven of eight school latrine blocks installed by the partnership in 2009-13 were in unsanitary condition.
The reasons for this included:
- failure to implement a regular cleaning schedule
- Lack of cleaning supplies readily available
- Absence of toilet paper or water for hygienic purposes
- Inability of schools to set money aside for maintenance and repairs
- Inability of local governments to provide funds to schools for maintenance and repair
- Inadequate funding for the proper training of government staff who are supposed to support and monitor these facilities
Each project site is unique, and that’s what makes it a project. For you to have a successful intervention, you need to understand the peculiarities of the site, the people, the structures, and everything. Then you can build an intervention or customize an intervention that will meet their needs. And then also, the social system able to support the intervention, to live beyond a certain timeline (or be sustainable).
The one fits all approach will not work. It might work at one site, it might not work at certain sites. That’s why you need to do the baseline studies, engage with the community, let them understand the technology options that are available to them so they can make an informed decision on the choice of technology that they want to adopt, and the associated cost and the operations and maintenance issues that come with them.
In that case, you have a certain level of certainty that they understand the issues and they are prepared for them. Thought that may not be a guarantee, but at least, it gives you some level certainty, or it minimizes the risk of facility breakdown and all that
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