June 2011 – Mission to Ghana
Tennessee volunteers provide life changing clean water, medical care, and school support as part of Rotary humanitarian service work.
The numbers are staggering. Over 800 million people lack access to safe water supplies, about one in eight people on the planet. Over 3.5 million people die each year from water-related diseases, 84% are children. Lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children at a rate equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing every four hours. The ancient Romans had better access to water supplies than half the people on Earth now. How can anyone tackle such an overwhelming challenge? One clean water well at a time, teamwork and a sustained, persistent effort was the response of Rotarians in the Upper Cumberland.
The Cookeville Breakfast Rotary Club, as part of Rotary’s international, humanitarian focus, became involved in water well drilling projects in Africa several years ago following the leadership of the Crossville Rotary Club. They had identified a collection of small villages in Western Ghana where access to clean water was an acute problem and asked other Rotarians to get involved. The villagers relied on surface drinking water sources, which posed the threat of bacterial and parasitical diseases like guinea worm infestation, typhoid and cholera. They had to carry pots of water from great distances to villages, which consumed much time and was a serious impediment to development.
Rotarians from the Crossville and Cookeville Breakfast Clubs make regular visits to Ateiku, Ghana to advance the mission of bringing accessible, clean drinking water to villages. Checking pumps and wells for proper operation and water purity are (L-R) Scot Shanks, Reverend Lawrence Oduro of Ateiku, Arthur Gernt and Patrick Ryan.
The Cookeville Breakfast Club started with a contribution of $3000 to build one well, one of 40 built by a partnership of local Rotary clubs and matching grants from the Rotary Foundation. That well was installed in the village of Huni Valley, in Western Ghana, where three wells served about 16,000 people. The next step for the Breakfast Rotary Club was accepting an invitation for a Rotarian to travel to Ghana with a team led by the Crossville Club in October 2009 to inspect all of the Rotary funded wells in the area, making sure they were functional and the water was pure.
The 2009 visit spawned new avenues for humanitarian aid. A request for medical help led the Rotary team to raise $5000 to fund a health fair in Ateiku, a village without a permanent medical facility or doctors. The funds were used to purchase medicines and bring in a medical team from cities in Ghana for a one-day clinic that saw over 1,000 people who otherwise would do without medical, optical and dental care. One member of the team, Michelle Sager, a German teenager who had been an exchange student in Crossville, raised money in her hometown of Hamburg to contribute to a school literacy effort. So there were also visits to distribute supplies and soccer balls to small, impoverished schools.
Rotarians Patrick Ryan and Arthur Gernt were among a team that visited schools in Western Ghana with soccer balls and school supplies as they inspected nearby Rotary sponsored water wells in October 2009.
The water project continued in the following months with the Crossville and Cookeville Breakfast Clubs working together to build a web site (www.RotaryGhanaProject.com) and to raise funds for the next phase of the well drilling work. The first effort to drill wells around Ateiku included funding for a vehicle-borne portable rig for a team from the area that was trained to drill and build the Rotary funded wells. It was such a success that the team partnering with Rotary was offered commissions to construct more new wells. So the second phase, which required a new, heavy duty drilling rig and a replacement vehicle, involved the Rotary team raising over $50,000 for a loan, $7500 from the Cookeville Breakfast Club, to bootstrap a self-sustaining water well drilling cooperative.
This spring Scot Shanks, from the Crossville Club and Patrick Ryan, from the Cookeville Breakfast Club put together plans for another team visit to Ateiku, using the earlier successful template: water well drilling, medical assistance and school literacy support. They recruited volunteers from the community including medical doctors Kim Johnson of Crossville and Rotarian Charles Womack of Cookeville, Rodney and Kelly French of Nashville and Kayde Johnson and Colleen Ryan, high school students from Crossville and Cookeville respectively. They all gave their time and covered their own travel, lodging and meal costs.
A Rotary sponsored team recently went to Ateiku, Ghana for humanitarian service work. It included: (L-R) Kayde Johnson, Dr. Kim Johnson, Scot Shanks, Kelly French, Rodney French, Dr. Charles Womack, Patrick Ryan and Colleen Ryan.
The trip was set for early June but much of the important work was done in the weeks before. To support the medical clinic about $7500 was raised from local Rotary Clubs, including a grant from the Rotary district; individuals and the Cookeville High School Interact Club. It was used to buy medicines and supplies, worth about $26,000 in retail value, to deliver from the United States; to fund a Ghanaian medical group at the health fair; and to support the school literacy project. Rotarians from the Cookeville Club and the Cookeville Breakfast Club met to sort and repack the tens of thousands of pills and supplies, aided by St. Michael’s Church and Cookeville’s Aphena Pharma Solutions. In addition to support from Rotary Clubs in Middle Tennessee, Rotarians in Cheyenne, Wyoming joined in the effort with a donation to aid the humanitarian mission.
On June 2 the Rotary team was off to Ghana with doctors, volunteers, and duffel bags stuffed with medicines and soccer balls. The 12-hour flight from Atlanta to Ghana’s capital city, Accra, was followed by a six-hour drive, the last two bone-rattling hours beyond paved roads. They were hosted by the Ateiku Church of Christ, the Rotary partner for earlier water well drilling work and visits, and they hit the ground running, setting up the pharmacy the evening they arrived. This trip unlike earlier visits benefited from the opening of a medical facility in Ateiku earlier this year. Through the generosity of Christina Adcock of Texas and her family a two-story building was erected to serve as the Ateiku hospital. Although it had yet to be staffed and equipped the facility represented a significant leap forward and was instrumental in the health fair’s success. The next morning people from Ateiku and the surrounding villages seeking care were lining up early and everybody got busy getting medicines ready and coordinating with the assembled team of Ghanaian medical professionals.
Dr. Charles Womack of Cookeville was among the volunteers who traveled to Ateiku, Ghana in June 2011 to staff a medical clinic that saw about 2,500 villagers who might otherwise go untreated for serious illnesses.
Over the course of the week the doctors and medical staff saw several hundred people a day, starting early and working well into each evening. Dr. Womack noted that, “Many of the people were suffering from serious medical conditions; some were extremely ill.” He added, “There was a very high incidence of malaria and other diseases that were going undiagnosed and untreated.” All of the team members, besides Dr. Womack and Dr. Johnson, had important roles to play, working in the pharmacy, directly assisting the medical doctors seeing patients and helping to manage the traffic flow in the clinic. When pharmaceutical stocks ran low, especially to treat malaria, the team contributed another $1000 to ensure there were enough medicines to continue. “The people just kept coming, even when you think you’ve seen everyone who could be within traveling distance of Ateiku,” said Womack, adding, “ The waiting room and tent outside seemed to always be filled with people waiting to see the doctors and get medical care.”
Scot Shanks (R) of the Crossville Rotary Club was instrumental in starting the water well drilling effort in Ateiku years ago and in the financing and delivery of a new rig to Ghana, ensuring more accessible, clean water wells will be drilled.
While the health fair was in full swing Scot Shanks and Patrick Ryan took time away from the clinic to help set up the newly delivered well drilling rig, financed with help from Rotary Clubs in Tennessee. Shanks and Ryan had traveled to the rig factory in Alabama before the trip to become familiar with operation of the new drilling equipment so they could provide instruction to the team in Ateiku. That team had been involved in earlier Rotary sponsored water well drilling so they were quickly out in the field, on the job working on the first new well. The goal for the water project is to establish a self-sustaining capability to build wells through contracts with the Government of Ghana, non-governmental organizations and individuals, and the repayment of the microloan that purchased the equipment. The process was just one more innovative way to further the mission of bringing clean, safe drinking water to people who desperately needed it. “Once you’ve walked through these villages and see what difference these water wells have made in the lives of so many people who barely have the bare necessities you’ll never take running water for granted again,” said Ryan.
Rotary team members Kayde Johnson (Left, standing) and Colleen Ryan (Right, standing) delivered school supplies, soccer balls and hope in their visits to village schools in Western Ghana.
Several team members spent some time visiting small villages around Ateiku to deliver school supplies and soccer balls to needy students. Colleen Ryan and Kayde Johnson traveled to a nearby town to buy notebooks, pens, pencils, dictionaries and other materials for the schools. “The schools were not what I was expecting,” said Ryan. “They were out in the forests, down dirt rounds and at the end of dirt paths. The kids there had little more than a desk and a roof over their heads; there were no windows or doors.” She added, “But they were clearly excited to see that there were people who wanted to help them. It was mind blowing that they were happier to get a pencil than some kids in the States are to get a new car.” Most of the money needed for the supplies was provided by a grant from the Cookeville High School Interact Club students.
The week in Ateiku flew by with the medical clinic serving about 2500 people from Ateiku and nearby hamlets; the next phase of bringing safe, accessible water to tens of thousands of people; and young Americans building bridges of hope with young Ghanaians. There were many signs that a small group with the backing of many back home could effect change, among them were the words of one teacher who watched American teenagers spending time with her students, “Please promise to come back,” she said. “We need more help.”
There are many people to thank for making the Rotary Ghana Project service a success, particularly the team that made the trip giving up their time, convenience and personal expenses. There are the many Rotary Clubs, the CHS Interact Club and the individuals who contributed money to the medical fair, the water well drilling work and the school literacy support. There are also the many individuals and businesses in Cookeville that each year support the Rotary Golf Classic tournament in September and the Rotary International Night in January, the major sources of financial support that make these good works possible. Thank you!
