The problem: water shortage, malnutrition and stolen choices

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to visit the Dasuyili community in northern Ghana, a focus of this new project. In this area on the edge of the Sahara Desert, increasingly inconsistent weather is making access to water a life or death struggle. While there is typically enough to eat and drink during the rainy season, the dry season can be dangerous as food runs out and people are forced to skim a few inches of dirty water for drinking, alongside their livestock. With family food intake dropping to barely one bowl of porridge a day, malnutrition and health complications run rampant.

Hunger and compromised health are also a huge barrier to education. Families in Dasuyili are forced to decide whether they eat or pay for their children’s education. And even while at school, malnutrition limits the ability to concentrate on their studies.

Gender Inequality makes every community issue worse. In communities like this, women and girls plant the food, work the fields, harvest the crops and cook the meals. Yet, they typically eat the least and last. Because of traditional and harmful gender roles, an issue being addressed through the project’s activities, women are often barred from decision-making in how to best use precious resources. For single moms in particular, it is almost impossible to find ways to earn their way to a better life. If unchanged, this cycle of poverty will persist for generations.

Healthcare investments also don’t do enough to reach women and girls, especially mothers and babies. Poor health and nutrition puts expecting women at high risk of complications which directly affects their young children. Their futures are limited before their lives even really begin.

The solution: empowering women & girls to protect choices

The project focuses on women because the data proves that empowering them is the best way improve the lives of everyone. According to the Clinton Global Initiative, when educated women have opportunities, they invest 90 percent of their income back into their children’s health and education, creating a big and positive ripple effect for others in the community.

How change happens: examples of the gift catalogue in action

It was very hard to meet people in this community who are struggling with malnutrition and living on barren land whose choices have been taken from them. To tour the health clinic and see old and broken equipment, a barren pharmacy cupboard and barrels of unhygienic rainwater that is their only option to use during childbirth.

But, after talking with families and walking through their community, I was given a glimpse of the positive things that are possible through groundbreaking activities led by Children

Believe. And how Canadian generosity is able to improve the nutrition and health of this community and its people.

Donors who provide the Ultimate Gardening Pack support women farmers here with garden equipment and supplies to grow more food and in a sustainable fashion. This includes how to store it to last through the lean times.

Donors who buy a Goat or other animals support them with animals and training to care for them. This leads to them growing a healthy herd that will improve their nutrition and provide income.

Donors who choose to Revitalize a Health Clinic support health workers like Alhassan with new equipment, training and medication she needs to treat the most at-risk members of the community, especially pregnant women.

Explore more inspiring stories like this in the latest edition of ChildVoice!