We want to say a huge ‘thank you’ to all our donors and supporters who have helped us to achieve our fundraising target to support Dream Big Ghana NGO’s Covid-19 Emergency Response. We have reached our target of £3000 on Just Giving thanks to people’s amazing generosity. We have also received a grant of £1000 from the St James’s Place Charitable Foundation, taking the total raised to £4000. We have never run an appeal like this before, and we are both delighted and humbled by the response we have received. The money has been put to excellent use in the village communities of Dzita and Dzita-Agbledomi.
Dream Big Ghana NGO’s base, Meet Me There African Home Lodge, temporarily closed on 16th March 2020 as Ghana responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. This freed up all 19 staff members to begin work on the emergency repose to Covid-19, with a focus on improving hand washing. The NGO has installed tippy-taps for every household in Dzita and Dzita-Agbledomi, a total of 1328 taps. (Tippy-taps are an effective low-tech solution to allow hand-washing under running water where there is no piped supply.) Once all the households were kitted out with taps, Dream Big Ghana NGO moved on to the local schools. Every classroom now has an easily accessible tap, ready for the children returning to education. A total of 22 tippy-taps have been installed across the four schools.
The Dream Big Ghana Learning Centre had to temporarily close its doors in March due to Covid-19. However, this created space to set up a soap manufacturing facility to further support hand hygiene. As of mid-July 2020, Dream Big Ghana NGO has distributed 1992 litres of liquid soap for free. A further 8944 litres have been sold at 20% of the market price. Charging a small fee has facilitated reinvestment in the form of a grant to the Dzita Development Association to make face masks for the local community.
Dzita and Dzita-Agbledomi have not escaped Covid-19. Two cases were confirmed in May, and a further 19 cases were identified following the initiation of contact tracing by the Ghana Health Service. Fortunately, there have been no fatalities, and we hope that our Covid-19 Emergency Response has played a part in improving public health. Our intervention for families and schools has been fully supported by local chiefs and assembly members, the Ghana Education Service and the Ghana Health Service (Anlo District). The installation of the tippy-taps was accompanied by health education sessions delivered by an exceptionally dedicated community health nurse, Rosina Ahot-Mensah. We hope this will have lasting benefits.
Covid-19 restrictions are now easing and Meet Me There Lodge has reopened with strict social distancing measures in place. The Dream Big Ghana NGO team is now moving into a new phase to ensure the focus on hand hygiene endures. The NGO will continue producing soap until September 2020, at which point they will hand over the manufacturing process to two fledgling local businesses. One family from each village will be provided with the start-up equipment and initial ingredients to manufacture the soap. A member of each family is attending a six-week entrepreneurship course delivered by Dream Big Ghana NGO, so should be equipped for a flying start. Through this initiative, the Covid-19 Emergency Response will leave a lasting legacy in the community in relation to economic development as well as public health.
We hope you will agree that Dream Big Ghana’s Covid-19 Emergency Response has been a great success. A huge THANK YOU to all our supporters once again for making it possible, and to the staff team at Dream Big Ghana NGO for their tireless work on behalf of their community.
