Friday, September 11, 2015

Latrine Photos

As promised, here are some pictures of the latrine in progress! 


Standing on top of the formwork to lay rebar for the concrete slab over the pits


 The concrete slab has been poured and cured, with six holes - one for each latrine.


The latrine stalls in progress!


 Latrine stalls with doors and PVC pipes to serve as ventilation


A side view of the latrine


Back view of the latrine, featuring Christine

A look at the inside of the pit!

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Wrapping Up!

Hello everybody!

Christine here! The first travel team (Adam, Anna, David, Wing-Sum) left us last week to head back to New York, and our mentor Alexi left Ghana last night as well. Leerang, Becca and I are in Accra for the last few days before we leave on Thursday evening, and we have a lot to talk about!

With regards to the KVIP, we left Kwasi Doi on Saturday with high hopes for the completion of the latrine. We had a few setbacks with time and materials, but we are confident that by the time we visit one last time on Thursday before our flight, the latrine will be finished and ready for us to help paint it (pictures of that later)! We had one more maintenance meeting with the community members of Kwasi Doi, and there was a great turnout - everybody is extremely excited to have a new, working latrine. Of course, we stressed the importance of constant maintenance for the success of the latrine, and the community members agreed.  We hope that the implementation of this latrine will not only improve sanitation in Kwasi Doi, but that it will inspire the community to continue with development in the future.

We continued to work on surveying in the Amanfrom area and had several meetings with the community, where we discussed bookkeeping and reliability within the newly elected unit committee, which is the main governing body of the area. We most likely won't be building anything in Amanfrom in the near future, but we are looking forward to building a stronger partnership over the coming years!

All right, time for us to go eat dinner - we'll check in one last time before we leave New York! Thanks to everybody who has been following our trip and supported us over the last few months - your encouragement has been wonderful for all of us.

All the best,
Becca, Christine, and Leerang