CRS, partners develop WASH toolbox for schools

The Catholic Relief Services (CRS), a non-governmental organisation, has developed a water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) toolbox for schools across the country.

It contains the approaches, strategies and processes for implementing WASH at the school level. A Programme Director with the CRS, Festus Barfi Fofie, said that at a National Level Learning Alliance Platform (NLLAP) in Accra yesterday.

The learning and sharing meeting was on the Integrated Community Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Improvement (ICOWASH) in Ghana CRS Ghana, in collaboration with the Resource Centre Network, is hosting the national learning and sharing session on the ICOWASH initiative.

Project

The ICOWASH project, spanning six years with two phases from 2017 to 2024, aims to improve water, sanitation and hygiene in Northern Ghana, targeting 306,000 people.

Funded by the Helmsley Charitable Trust, it focused on sustainable WASH services, institutionalising best practices, and enhancing knowledge management.

The overall objective of the meeting was to share ICOWASH experience and lessons documented as models and strategies with WASH sector stakeholders to stimulate adoption and upscale.

Mr Fofie said the toolbox, which was essentially a website, had all of its plans and approaches. "When you look at the WASH sector, and even globally, it is not easy to find resources when you want to implement it in schools.

Mr Fofie said the platform also contained the organisation's documents, training manuals and presentations that could be adopted for implementation.

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Designs

Moreover, he said the designs of WASH facilities that had been developed were all on the site, adding that it was a place where people could get access to everything related to WASH in schools.

At the next NLLAP session, he said a demonstration would be done for stakeholders to see the contents in detail.

The initiative, he said, was new so the schools were to be aware of it, and that it was only launched internally as a civil society organisation two months ago.

He said the initiative would thus be shared at the national, district and school levels, as well as globally. He said although most of the components in it were for schools at the basic level, some of them could be shared at the second-cycle level.

Initiative

He said the initiative would be shared with key government stakeholders, particularly the Ghana Education Service, for it to institutionalise it at the national level.

"We are only an NGO and we only try to influence policy and practice. Enforcement is not our bid to do, that is for the government and duty bearers," he said.

WASH, he said, was a fundamental right and a need at the school level. A Senior Project Officer in charge of Community Mobilisation at the CRS, Alfred Avenona, said the concerns about the low quality of local materials often used for constructing household latrines called for training on alternative construction materials.

He said there was a need for the introduction of sustainable faecal sludge management systems, including treatment facilities that would transform the faecal sludge into organic manure for farming.