Access to potable and quality water for rural communities: A case study from the Yua community in the Upper East Region of Ghana

Access to potable water for drinking as a fundamental human right of all people without discrimination to safe and adequate water to meet basic human needs is a great challenge to major rural communities in Ghana. Only 39.9% of Ghanaians have access to pipe borned water and the rest depend on streams, dams, ponds, pools, borehole and rivers. These majorities live in rural communities and stand a high risk of contracting water borne diseases such as river blindness, guinea worms and bilharzias with severe consequence on productivity.As a result, the Government of Ghana launched the National Community Water and Sanitation Programme (NCWSP) in 1994 to address the problem of rural access to potable water in the country. A number of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are also implementing water and sanitation programmes in rural areas in line with the United Nation General Assembly declaration in the year 1981 as International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade (IDWSD). One of such NGOs is the Ghana Poultry Network (GAPNET) based in Ghana and its international partners -Northern Arizona University- Engineers Without Borders (NAU-EWB) . These two organizations had implemented one borehole and one water plaza project in the Yua community in the Upper East Region of Ghana to help alleviate poverty, improve health care delivery, generate sustainable income and empower rural women. A research conducted on the NAU-EWB and GAPNET by the intern students from University for Development Studies, University of Education, Ghana and Bentley University of USA show that, the water project has helped the community to increase children school enrolment by 12% from 2005-2010. This is because the children and their parents do not have to walk a long distance in searching for water that prevent the children to absent themselves from school. The water project has also helped some of the community members to grow vegetables during dry season because they use collected water from dug-out of the borehole for irrigation. Health status has improved because the community members have access to clean and quality water for drinking.This paper seeks to look at the methodology and strategies used by GAPNET and NAU-EWB for the success implementation of the water project in the Yua community

کلیدواژه ها:

Potable water ، rural community ، poverty ، health ، Income generation ، sustainability