Fostering Local Leadership in Gouma
Welcome to Gouma! From our most recent community partner, 12 women and men have volunteered to help improve the wellbeing of their entire community through OneVillage Partners’ Community Action program. These volunteers are part-way through a 14-step training on project design. By the end of the process, they will have designed, planned, and budgeted a project that will solve an issue identified as a priority challenge by the community. They will emerge with leadership skills to manage the project and see it to fruition: collaboration, stakeholder engagement, mobilization, public speaking, and project management.
One of the first activities we do with communities is call a community meeting where individuals cast votes on what challenges they believe are most important to address. We have been told by people in our partner communities that this is something that they have never before seen another organization do. The Gouma community voted to first prioritize improving hygiene and sanitation. Through trainings with OneVillage Partners, the volunteers did research in their community and found that open-defecation due a lack of toilet infrastructure was causing diarrheal disease, especially amongst children. They brainstormed ideas and put their solutions to paper – a community-wide latrine and handwashing system for 100% access to sanitation facilities.
Gouma's latrine and sanitation project will cost $20,000. You can help the Gouma volunteers and improve health in their community by contributing to Give MN's Spring Forward Campaign from May 1-11. Plus, a group of OneVillage Partners friends have generously offered to match 100% of donations, up to $5,500!
Below are a few of the volunteers from Gouma who we are working to make the latrine project a reality for their community.
“I am impressed at how confident our Community Action Group volunteers are in leading us into prioritizing our needs over our wants. Seeing Jinnah Sakpa addressing the whole community has also given me the confidence to lend my voice and participate in activities that will improve our wellbeing and improve the standard of living here”.
Baindu Foday, Community Action volunteer, Gouma
“We have the solution to our problems here, but we have been unaware of our strength for a very long time. Knowledge in designing our own projects will guide us to bring a sustainable solution to those challenges ourselves.”
Abdulai Sannoh, Community Action volunteer, Gouma
“Solving the problem of open-defecation as a practice can help us solve other challenges, improve the health and overall wellbeing of everyone in this community”.
Ibrahim Musa, Community Action Volunteer, Gouma
“Today’s session taught me to detail the root cause of our priority problem. This is a tool I will use to better educate my community on the need to eradicate open-defecation with our collective efforts”.
Musa Jusu, Community Action volunteer, Gouma