The 1 Million Youth Action Challenge (1MYAC), a flagship youth empowerment and community development initiative, has officially ended in the Kpone-Katamanso Municipality (KKMA) after eight months of sustained sanitation campaigns aimed at tackling poor hygiene and disease prevention in the area.
An initiative by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and coordinated globally by the International Secretariat for Water (ISW), the challenge provided young Ghanaians the opportunity and a platform to design and implement community-based projects that address social, economic and environmental challenges in their localities while inspiring civic responsibility and a sense of ownership among the youth.
In Kpone-Katamanso, participants chose sanitation as their priority area following the widespread cholera outbreak in December last year, which affected parts of the municipality and other communities across the country.
The six young volunteers led by Elizabeth Hagan, an 1MYAC ambassador in Ghana, undertook education campaigns targeting schoolchildren, market women, and youth groups on proper hygiene practices, while distributing hand-washing materials to promote behavioural change.
At the closing ceremony held on Tuesday, the participants showcased the outcomes of their interventions before local officials, community leaders, and representatives of the National Youth Authority (NYA), who expressed satisfaction with the progress made.
Miss Hagan said the aim of the project was to complement municipal and national efforts on sanitation and disease prevention. She explained that the team distributed essential hand-washing items to three basic schools, the Kpone main market and the Municipal Assembly while educating residents on hygiene practices.
The schools included Kpone Methodist ‘B’, Okushibri KKMA Basic and St. Lawson KKMA Basic schools, in addition to the Kpone market. Through the engagements, about 1,515 pupils and residents were designated as “sanitation ambassadors” to sustain the campaign.
The team also recommended to the Assembly an increase in budgetary allocation for sanitation programmes, particularly in the areas of project implementation and monitoring.
The Municipal Director of the NYA, Janice Anaman-Mensah, commended the youth for their passion and innovation in addressing real-life problems. “The 1 Million Youth Action Challenge has proven that young people are not only the leaders of tomorrow but also change agents of today,” she remarked.
The Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) of KKMA, Samuel Tetteh Quarshie Morton, praised the participants for complementing government’s efforts to improve sanitation, particularly with the reintroduction of the National Sanitation Day exercise.
He lauded the SDC and ISW for their financial and technical support towards the implementation and success of the project and assured the Assembly’s commitment to supporting such initiatives.
Community leaders present at the ceremony testified to visible improvements in their localities as a result of the youth-led campaigns. They expressed optimism that, if scaled up, the initiative could provide sustainable solutions to challenges such as poor sanitation and youth unemployment in the municipality.
FROM KEN AFEDZI, KPONE