Naziru Mawadatu of Damongo Girls Model Junior High School in the West Gonja municipality of the Savannah region has successfully launched the a sanitation campaign to help promote good sanitation practices.
Mawadatu, the enviable daughter of Gonjaland who was crowned as the 2021/2022 National Child Sanitation Diplomat, has on Thursday, 14th July, 2022, officially launched her child sanitation project on open defecation free (ODF) at Damongo.
Mawadatu, according to Rita Akayisung (Integrated Development Facilitator) of World Vision Ghana, since her appointment as the Child Sanitation Diplomat for Ghana, has been actively engaging key stakeholders and policy makers especially in the WASH sector, the media and community leaders to campaign against Open Defecation especially within schools and communities.
Rita Akayisung added that Mawadatu’s Open Defecation Free (ODF) project code named “One Household, One Toilet” project. is believed to be a new dawn in the lives of the vulnerable children as it is aimed to give them a brighter future by going further and higher with them.
The Human Resource officer at the regional education directorate, Mr. Iddisah Seidu on behalf of the Regional Director of education said, the Savannah region is very proud of the Sanitation Ambassador (Mawudatu) for her achievement which has given the opportunity to Damongo to host the campaign launch for Open Defecation Free (ODF) and good sanitation practices.
The education director used the event to challenge all the students in the region to emulate Mawudatu’s achievement by winning the next challenge for the region.
He added that, this is the opportune time for the region to conscientize and create the awareness of every Tom, Dick and Harry on the need to keep their environment clean and avoid open defecation.
He further explained that, a survey conducted in public schools across Ghana by WASH revealed that about 10,000 schools do not have toilet facilities there by making students to end up going to the bush to defecate resulting in snake bites or some of them taking it as an opportunity to run off classes which sometimes affect academic work negatively.
He noted that, as a new region, it is important to redouble efforts towards making the region clean in order to attract investors and open it up for bigger opportunities.
He called on parents and adults to inculcate the habit of ensuring that their children are practicing good sanitary habits when they are at home and also encourage good hand washing practices to stay off germs and diseases like cholera, diarrhea, typhoid etc for the betterment of themselves.
Mawadatu Naziru on her part, thanked world vision Ghana for the honor and opportunity given her to champion the campaign against open defecation across the country and called on her colleague students to support the course by saying No to open defecation and also play a role in educating their parents on the importance and the need to have toilet facilities at their homes.
She said, she is posed to work to ensuring that every household has a toilet facility and cautioned girls who attain the marriage age to accept only good husbands who have toilet facilities at their homes; No toilet, no marriage.
gkumatey@gmail.com/0243531604
