THE GREEN CLINIC
We ask you, supporters from all over the world, to join the villagers of Atsiekpoe, Ghana, in the next phase of building ‘The Green Clinic’ for their community. This will be a primary health care and disease prevention clinic that will serve roughly 3200 people of the rural, medicare-deprived area of Vome.
The foundation of the building has just been laid out, so now walls and a roof are needed!
Where the villagers will continue to raise funds themselves, in this phase they ask - in cooperation with the Stepping Stones for Africa Foundation - your support in order to buy materials and skilled labor. Stepping Stones for Africa guarantees that your contribution will be of direct benefit to the project. As soon as a substantial amount has been raised, the community can contract local builders and start the construction of the upper structure.
Ground-breaking development concept
The Green Clinic is being developed in a ground-breaking way: the community itself has taken the initiative for the project and decided to raise 20% themselves. Besides that, they will be responsible for maintenance of the building and the belonging facilities in the future.
Since the community has taken responsibility for the project, the Ghanaian Government has guaranteed medical equipment and staffing once it is finished.
The villagers are building the clinic in partnership with the Stepping Stones for Africa Foundation (SSFA) and the Ghana-based travel organization Jolinaiko Eco Tours, who serves as a co-sponsor for this project.
SSFA has been working with Atsiekpoe for many years and together they realized household latrines, ecotourism infrastructure and sanitary for the Vome Methodist Primary School.
Eco-friendly building
The clinic will among others be innovative in its use of environmentally friendly ‘inter-locking’ compressed bricks. Since the local people will be trained with this material, it brings development of new skills and sustainable economic activity to this deprived area.
Besides the eco-friendly building method, the clinic will use renewable energy sources for its operations, like solar power and compost toilets. Also, tree-planting forms a significant aspect of the entire concept, where trees will be used to shade the building, to provide revitalizing resting places and compensate the CO2 emissions.
Multiple users
Apart from the ambition to establish a basic clinic and provide disease prevention, the community also anticipates health educational programs and WASH (Water, Health and Sanitation) solutions. Besides that, other organizations will be hosted with a room to facilitate their own health, planning and prevention projects.
About Stepping Stones for Africa
Stepping Stones for Africa (SSFA) is a Dutch/Ghanaian charity organization focused on grassroots development in West Africa. We work together with community-based associations to achieve their development objectives. We are very well-connected to the West African context where the majority of our board members have been working and living in different fields of development for more than a decade. SSFA was initially founded in The Netherlands in 2006 by Cindy Noordermeer-Panou and Remco Kalf, but a Ghanaian branch was opened in Ghana in 2015.
In West Africa, we see many communities lacking basic necessities like healthcare, clean water or sustainable ways of making a living. Despite being mostly well organized socially, these communities are often not capable of making significant changes by themselves to improve the quality of life in their community.
Our vision is to empower communities to lead their development and improve the living conditions of their inhabitants, through small scale projects that are initiated and sustained by the community itself or its leaders, and not imposed by others. SSFA wants to provide capacity building to fuel these community-initiated projects and make them a success.
More information
Much more about this project in the updates below, or visit the Green Clinic project pages on the website of Stepping Stones for Africa.
On behalf of the Ghanaian people of Atsiekpoe and the Vome district: thanks for your attention and your contribution!
