APDO

Afram Plains Development Organisation (APDO)

APDO is an acronym for Afram Plains Development Organisation. The name is derived from the district where the organisation carries out most of its programmes.

Location

APDO is currently based in the Afram Plains District of Eastern Region, Ghana. Afram Plains District is located between Lat. 6o 40I N and 70 10'1 N; long. 0O 40I E and 0o 10I E; or at the North West corner of the Eastern Region. The District is one of the five in Ghana, which has been classified by UNDP and the National Development Planning Commission as the poorest and most deprived in terms of development.

Brief background

APDO is a professional non-governmental organisation (NGO) committed to the development of the Afram Plains. APDO was set up in 1986 by a group of committed individuals who saw the need for a non-sectarian organisation specializing in the rural water supply sector. The activities have since expanded to include sanitation and hygiene promotion, community development, training and institutional strengthening, promotion of basic primary education with emphasis on the girl-child at community, district, national and international level. We effectively do this under our networking and capacity building programmes at all three levels.

Since 1986, APDO has developed working partnership with Water Aid, UNICEF, UNDP, Ghana Education Service, World Vision International, Ministry of Health, District Assemblies and currently, CWSA, GEF, etc...

APDO's legal status emanates from a certificate to operate as a non-profit making organisation granted by the Registrar General Department, hence can sue or be sued, let or be awarded contracts.

In 1990, APDO signed a contract with Water Aid London to work as an in-country partner organisation to carry out direct implementation of water and Sanitation programmes. In 1995 it signed an agreement with UNICEF to implement education reforms in the Afram Plains District (Childscope).

At that time APDO was called the Presby Committee on Water and Sanitation. The name was later changed to Catholic Borehole Project. Then it became known as Afram Plains Water and Sanitation Committee (AWASAC).

In 1995, the name AWASAC was changed to AWASAP (Afram Plains Water and Sanitation Programme). This was also later changed to the current name, APDO as the scope of operation widened.

Mission and vision

The vision of APDO is "Working in partnership with the poor and vulnerable communities to realize their full potentials towards poverty reduction".

This vision is being pursued through the mission statement, which states that "APDO is a professional registered NGO committed to contributing towards poverty reduction through empowering the poor and vulnerable communities to access safe water, hygiene and sanitation services, quality education, information on HIV/AIDS prevention and sustainable use of natural resources."

The focus and emphasis of implementation approach is on encouraging, networking and collaboration with developmental organizations with the participation and involvement of the recipients to ensure sustainability of projects and or programmes initiated.

The use of participatory approaches to project design and implementation is fundamental to projects and programmes initiated by beneficiaries and supported by APDO. Communities are supported to identify their developmental problems; prioritise them; find solutions and make decision as well as design action plans to solve them. A component of this process is capacity building through training and other technical support to village level institutions or community-based organizations (Watsan/CBOs, etc).

Staff strength

APDO has high quality and versatile human resources with a staff strength of 20. Their professions and experiences range from Community Development Promoters, Water technicians, Development planners, Sanitation experts etc. The organisation has a 15 member Board of Directors that takes policy decisions of the organisation.

At management level, APDO is headed by an executive Director, assisted by a Deputy who is in charge of day-to-day administration of the organisation. It has an account Unit headed by a professional Accountant; and an organisational Development Unit responsible for Monitoring, Evaluation and Research. Other departments include Extension Services Unit, which is responsible for projects planning, implementation and reporting on all 'external/contract' programmes; as well as Zonal offices.

It must be stated that the management units are not perfect in themselves. As such the organisation is pursuing a constant policy of training and retraining of the staff, from top management level to the field officers level. Day in and out new challenges come up and so the staff need to be upgraded in their skills to be able to cope with the modern demands of the job.

Offices

APDO has four offices at present, which are all located in the Afram Plains. The Headquarters is situated at Tease, the second largest town in the District. The remaining offices are located at Donkorkrom the district capital, Kwasi Fante that is about 71km west of Donkorkrom and Samanhyia also located about 14 km west of Donkorkrom.

Equipment and vehicles

APDO has 4 cars at the moment: one Land Cruiser; one Toyota Tipper Truck; and two single Cabin Land Rovers. She has nine (9) motorbikes for fieldwork and one Holman compressor machine. Our offices at Tease and Donkorkrom are equipped with 2 computers each, telephone and fax machines. Our training and resource centre at Tease is also equipped with a computer and accessories, seating chairs, Nobol boards and overhead projector for seminars, workshops and training programmes.

Current programmes

At the moment the "traditional" programme areas of APDO has increased and widened from the initial focus on the provision of Water and Sanitation facilities to nine (9) interrelated programmes. APDO's experience and achievements since its establishment in 1986 relate to its wide range of related programmes grouped under the following:

• Rural Water Supply
• Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion
• Education Promotion (CHILDSCOPE)
• Capacity Building / Training of CBOs and Groups
• Sensitisation/education on sustainable use of natural resources (Environmental Protection)
• HIV/AIDS control and management campaign
• Others

A number of activities are undertaken under each programme all with the main aim of empowering people to initiate and have access to affordable social services. APDO in this regard is highly supportive of the decentralization policy in the belief that all members of society are equally important and individuals know their problems better.

At the moment the programme areas of APDO has increased and widened from the initial focus on Water and Sanitation to nine (9) interrelated programmes:

Rural water supply

Water is Life and for that matter APDO wishing to bring life into the people of Afram Plains District, first entered into the district with rural water supply project. This translated into the provision of potable water to deprived rural communities.

Specific activities being carried out under the rural water supply programme include:

• Animation and mobilization (Using PLA/PRA methodology)
• Networking/Community Development
• Borehole Drilling
• Civil works: - Concrete Pad/ Apron/Washing Base
• Pump installation
• Pump maintenance volunteers training (PMVs)
• Refresher Training for Existing pump volunteers
• Preventive maintenance of hand pumps
• Sale of pump parts
• Follow ups visit/monitoring
• Static Water Level (SWL)
• Global Positioning System (GPS) and mapping of Boreholes/Wells
• Rehabilitation (flushing and development)

At present, APDO has assisted approximately over 65 communities in the district with borehole water facilities. The provision of water facilities runs concurrently with the formation and capacity building of community level structures for the sustainable management of the facilities. At the moment we have formed over 100 WATSAN committees and trained more than 130 of such committees overall in the District. Also over 400 pump maintenance volunteers have been trained and equipped with the capacity to detect faults, dismantle boreholes and repair them when necessary. The composition of these two structural bodies is about 60% men and 40% women. The approach to our rural water programme is purely based on the principle of community empowerment / demand driven approach.

Hygiene promotion

Under hygiene promotion, APDO has been encouraging communities and schools to adopt and adapt good hygiene practices. The hygiene promotion activities are imbedded in the water and sanitation activities. The hygiene promotion is carried out in collaboration with the District Health Management Team (DHMT) and staff of the Environmental Health Department and involves training of community members and Teachers as well as Village Health Co-ordinators (VHC).

Activities:

• Watsan capacity building
• PLA sessions on hygiene promotion in communities (development of prototype hygiene strategies)
• Hygiene promotion in schools among pupils and teachers
• School Health Education Training for institutions in the health sector
• Baseline data collection in communities on the health situations
• Child-To-child for health promotion training for teachers and pupils
• First Aid volunteers training
• Formation and training of school based health clubs

Sanitation promotion

Health is associated with not only potable water availability and knowledge on hygiene education. As such we have a programme component that focuses on the promotion of good sanitation practices in the communities. To this end APDO has been educating and sensitising communities about the importance of living in a clean sanitary environment. APDO has created a Sanitation Market to facilitate sanitation promotion in the Afram Plains District.

The specific activities under the latrine promotion include:

• Community animation and mobilisation
• Construction of VIP/KVIP latrine facilities
• Latrine Artisans Training
• User education

At the moment APDO has trained over 60 latrine artisans who are stationed in the communities doing the promotion and construction of various designs of latrine facilities.

Micro credit

One of the inhibiting factors to poverty reduction in the Afram Plains is lack of or inadequate credit facilities available to prospective farmers and traders. To help solve this problem, APDO has been operating a Micro-Credit (Loan scheme) for women groups in the District. The scheme currently operates with a budget of about 10 million Cedis and is a revolving fund, which has so far benefited about 16 groups with a total membership of over 200 peasant farmers. To the beneficiaries, the fund provides a humane, less bureaucratic, and less costly alternative source of credit as compared to the formal banking system. The scheme was started in the year 2000 and has so far operated successfully towards assisting rural dwellers come out of their poverty cycle.

Promotion of basic formal education (Childscope)

APDO's commitment to the gradual but total development of the Afram Plains district has led to her commitment to the implementation of a basic educational reform project called the Childscope process. Childscope is an innovative approach to the development of basic formal education, especially in the rural communities. The programme is implemented by APDO in collaboration with GES and sponsored by UNICEF.

Activities under the Childscope programme include:

• PTA / SMC development
• Teacher development
• Promotion of pupil/teacher/parent relations
• Enrolment drives
• School infrastructure development
• Provision of sanitation facilities (KVIPs and urinals)

Activities under childscope

Planning
Stakeholders of education meet at the beginning of every quarter at the district level to plan for the activities of the quarter. It is from these quarterly planning sessions that communities that have been selected for the Childscope programme will be known to all the collaborators and stakeholders.

Community orientation
Community orientation is carried out on the importance of education and the objectives of Childscope as a model solution to solving educational problems. This orientation is done at the community level by APDO field staff.

Formation and training of childscope teams
Community mobilisation teams called Childscope teams are formed and trained by APDO on community mobilisation techniques and approaches. The team members usually comprise of staff of GES, NCCE, DHMT, Department of Community Development, MOFA and other decentralized departments who are directly involved in the community promotional activities.

Collection and analysis of baseline data
Collection and analysis of baseline data about the status of communities earmarked for expansion of Childscope. This involves detailed PLA sessions conducted in such communities and other stakeholders of education in the communities.

Follow-up visits
Follow-up visits are undertaken to schools to discuss and review their action plans (making the process a continuous one).

Enrolment drives
Enrolment drives through community meetings at which APDO facilitates discussions that review the state of enrolment of children in schools. Related to enrolment is the issue of retention of enrolled children. Parents/guardians' conscience is appealed to so as to constantly support their children to attend school frequently and regularly. Enrolment drives are also carried out through regular visits of role models to schools and communities to talk to sceptical parents that their children can make it in the community schools. Female role models have mostly been used for this programme so far and have targeted the objective of girl child education.

Training workshops
Training workshops are also organized for teachers, community opinion leaders and other stakeholders with the view to enhancing their capacity to effectively participate in the development of education in the communities. Some of these workshops have been focused on providing information on how to integrate topical development issues into the mainstream of teachers and stakeholders' activities. Thus issues like HIV/AIDS; Gender sensitivity; health; environment; etc are often discussed at such forums.

School health promotion
This is also a programme component of Childscope. The aim of this project is to create the right and healthy atmosphere in and around the child to be able to study and learn. Health education activities often undertaken under the Childscope process include hygiene and sanitation education and campaigns through drama, role plays, route matches, mounting of health posts/bills, etc; formation and training of school health clubs; HIV/AIDS and malaria awareness campaigns, de-worming of children, etc. The school health promotion component of Childscope is a recognition given to the role that children can play in behaviour change in the communities. As such teachers and pupils are being trained on how to use the six steps of child-to-child methodology to disseminate information and change the health behaviours of both children and adults.

Through this, APDO has formed School Health Clubs in a number of Schools and trained the club members on hygiene and sanitation issues. Over 60 school health education promoters have also been trained by APDO and these people are in the communities doing health promotion not only in the schools but also in the communities.

Formation and training of PTA/SMC
Achieving community participation in the development of education is one of the key objectives of the Childscope process. One way APDO does this under the Childscope process is to form and build the capacity of PTAs and SMCs. These two institutions have been the starting point for getting community members involved in the development of education. The idea has gained acceptance and recognition among all the schools we work with. However the communities have began to make changes to the original idea of the PTA/SMCs concept. By going with the concept of PTA for instance, some communities have realised that the participation of community members in educational matters has been limited to only teachers and parents who have wards in the school. Therefore some communities have instead proposed to change from being called PTAs to CTAs (i.e. Community Teachers' Association). Periodic capacity building workshops are organised for all CTA, PTA and SMC members from all the Childscope schools and they are taken through a variety of topics ranging from education health, social and even conflict management depending issues/problems found/discovered by field workers at a point in time.

The needy children fund

The success of a child's educational career depends on funding support from the parents/wards. But sadly however, there are a number of children in the Afram Plains who are not privileged to have this kind of support given to them, either because they have been orphaned or that their guardians are obviously poor and cannot cater for their educational needs. APDO, in her interactions with the schools and communities has come across many children who fall into this unfortunate situation. The organisation has therefore instituted a "Needy Children Fund" where funds are solicited from both within and outside the District for the purpose of assisting these children, materially and financially. Some of the regular contributors to this fund have come from some senior staff of Unicef House in Accra, and benevolent individuals. But by far the biggest source of funds for this Fund has come from the staff of APDO who through voluntary contributions deducted at source from their salaries have been contributing not less than ¢300,000.00 a month to the fund. The fund which was started in 2000 has so far generated over ¢15,000,000.00 and has been assisting over 25 school children who are considered needy but brilliant. The assistance has been in the form of payment of school fees, provision of school bags, uniforms, sandals, text books, chronometer, and credit support to parents of the children to enable them engage in trading, processing and farming. The needy children fund was the brainchild of APDO and was not part of the initial design of the Childscope process.

Natural resources management programme

To forestall a looming environmental catastrophe and/or encourage sustainable use of natural resources in the district, APDO has in collaboration with other partners initiated an environment project in addition to its major projects. We were greatly alarmed by the continuous decrease in the water table of the district, evidenced by the analysis of the Static Water Level, which the organisation takes in every quarter. The environment project was started in February 2002 and is aimed at promoting efficient management of the vegetation through consensus building among stakeholders. APDO and UNDP GEF under Small Grants Projects are funding it jointly.

Specific activities under this project titled capacity building for sustainable fuel wood management include:

• Promotion and construction of energy-saving stoves in communities
• Formation and capacity building of Green Clubs in schools
• Support for farmers/groups and schools to establish woodlots
• Training of community members on construction the energy saving stove.
• Sensitisation/education of traditional rulers and community opinion leaders on

Through the project:

• Over 130 energy stoves have been constructed in communities
• 3 schools have been assisted to embark on tree planting
• Over 120 community opinion leaders comprising of chiefs, Assembly members, Unit committee executives, fire volunteers from different communities in the Afram Plains have been sensitised through workshops/seminars
• Seven (7) green clubs have been formed and members sensitised

HIV/AIDS control and management campaign

APDO with funding support from Ghana AIDS Commission is currently implementing an HIV/AIDS awareness programme in the Afram Plains District. The prime goal of the project whose target audience is pupils/students aged between 11 and 19 years in 50 basic schools is to achieve behaviour change among the youth so as to reduce the risk of acquisition of the disease.

Specific field activities carried out so far include:

• Education, sensitisation and awareness creation about HIV/AIDS in 54 basic schools.
• Formation of HIV/AIDS clubs in 53 basic schools
• Research into people's perceptions and knowledge about HIV/AIDS in Afram Plains.

Other programmes

Other programmes being implemented currently include:

• The Village Infrastructure Project (VIP) and
• The Community Water Supply and Sanitation Project (CWSSP).

The activities under the CWSSP are not different from the rural water supply, hygiene promotion and sanitation activities of APDO.

Under the VIP APDO formed and provided capacity building for 23 CBOs, Women's Groups, and Farmers Groups under the Phase One and also trained 9 out of the 23 that qualified to benefit under Phase two of the Project. Nine (9) CBOs/groups are currently being assisted to develop business plans for their operations.

Networking

Networking is an important strategy of APDO's programme implementation plan. To this end, the organisation works closely with Departments and institutions in and out of the district. We call these institutions and organisations collaborators. They include; the District Health Management Team (DHMT), National Commission For Civic Education (NCCE), Ghana Education Service (GES), Commission On Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Forestry Commission, District Assembly, Chiefs and Traditional authorities; etc.

For further information on APDO contact:

The Executive Director
Box 93
Donkorkrom-Afram Plains
ER
Ghana

Tel: (233-848) 22029/22091
Email: apdo@africaonline.com.gh