Get Involved

Ways to help our cause

The best gifts we can bring to Ashanti villages are clean water, latrines and training in health and hygiene. We believe these three are of equal importance and together can bring huge improvements to the quality of people’s lives.

Some people focus on one or two of these benefits, and we’re happy to help deliver one or two at a time. For example, with your help we may be able to hire a drill rig for a week, drill multiple boreholes and obtain economies of scale. And while it’s essential that most of the lessons on health and hygiene are delivered by an Ashanti, European volunteers can be a great help in reinforcing the messages.

Develop a Village

We invite every individual, every family, every company or group of friends to help by sponsoring an Ashanti village. Ideally, we would like to take you on a visit to Ashanti to choose the village for yourself. With us alongside to advise, you would work with the Chief, Elders and Village Council to draw up a strategy for development, always beginning by providing sanitation.

By this, we mean funding the materials and skilled labour to enable each household to build a latrine, while training the community in health and hygiene. Water provision is equally important but can be complex and is not included at this point.

We also strengthen the villages’ governing bodies to ensure they are able to maintain the improvements independent of us.

Back in Europe, you would give us the money as and when it suited you. We would spend it exactly in line with your agreement with the village, and you would be welcome to make more visits at any time and see the changes for yourself.

But we know that not everyone can come to Ghana and we are happy to work with you in whatever way suits you best. As a volunteers’ charity – we pay no wages or salaries for work outside Ghana – we are committed to transparency in all our dealings and will send you accounts, reports, photos and other documentation as often as you want.

We advise you to start by providing your village with sanitation, as described in the background notes in this folder. The cost for a small village is no more than £600 – a tenth of the amount that one group of friends collected for us on line in just three months – and larger amounts can provide for more ambitious projects or larger villages.

If you could help us in this way, you would undoubtedly save lives and earn the undying gratitude and friendship of a whole village. Please let us know if you would like more information, and meanwhile I look forward to hearing from you.