Sekyeredumasi District Assembly diza Sulemani is a 37-year-old Using COVID-19 support directed to Ghana’s woman with four children. She has metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies, been living in the Kobiriti community the GrEEN project has established a A in the Sekyeredumasi District since mechanized borehole in Kobiriti. This has freed moving from Accra two years ago. community members of the laborious activity associated with fetching water. Kobiriti has four handpumped borehole facilities. When two of these broke down, Adiza, washing her corn before taking it to it left only two functioning boreholes for a the cornmill, says that the water from the population of just over 200. The older residents mechanized borehole is “sweeter” than that found it difficult to operate the manual previously pumped in the community, which handpump and sometimes had to ask the is salty and undrinkable. Like the rest of the neighborhood children to help them fill their community, Adiza is quite pleased with the water containers. mechanized borehole brought to Kobiriti by UNCDF through the GrEEn project. Sekyere Affram Plains District he Sekyere Affram Plains District is water for cooking and drinking. This water the poorest in the Ashanti region; source was unreliable, drying up during the its residents have no source of dry season; it was also unhealthy. Because it T livelihood beyond subsistence was also used for cattle, the water was usually farming. Asibi Adongo, a 50-year-old married muddy by day’s end. woman with seven children, remembers when the land was fertile and the yield from an acre The new borehole has helped the people meant she could sell the extra for more income of the community tremendously, notes the for the family. But that is no longer the case, community’s chief. He points out too that the and Asibi is not quite sure why. people used to have medical issues associated with skin rashes and stomach pains. Since She is, however, extremely happy with the using the potable water from the borehole water UNCDF has provided the community over the past two months, he has not heard through the borehole constructed by the anyone complaining of such ailments anymore. GrEEn project with COVID-19 relief funds. The The borehole serves a population of about 915 borehole means the community no longer people. has to trek to a stream miles away to fetch Sekyere Kumawu District Assembly ater is life,” notes Mary But the mechanized borehole constructed Gyasiwa Yeboah, a resident by UNCDF through the GrEEn project holds of the 3,479-person the potential for change. The structure “Wcommunity of Banko supplements Banko’s one existing borehole, in the Sekyere Kumawu District. And when which typically dries up during the dry season, water comes into a community, it brings forcing residents further afield to fetch water. opportunity – particularly to one dependent, as Banko is, on farming. Banko’s only livelihood Mary has four children – one in university and is farming vegetables and some root tubers. the others about to enter secondary school. However, residents find it difficult to expand Because she herself did not go to school, their farms because they lack financial education is very important to her. The fact resources and thus the fertilizer they need to that this new borehole frees her children from increase their yields. onerous labour clearly and firmly links it to a better, more prosperous future for her, her farm and her family. .