Pursuant to component five of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) for Health Project, partnerships are being developed with the private sector to leverage the contribution from the United States Government. In this regard, Unilever Ghana Foundation is being partnered under their Unilever Sustainable Living Plan for communities

The Unilever Foundation is dedicated to improving the quality of life through the provision of hygiene, sanitation, access to clean drinking water, basic nutrition and enhancing self-esteem. In the past few years, responding to challenges in school sanitation, the Unilever Ghana Foundation built hygiene stations in public basic schools in Tema to give back to the community and to promote healthy conditions in schools as part of the broader Unilever Sustainable Living Plan for communities

The Unilever Ghana Foundation completed the first set of hygiene stations in 2014 and handed them over to the school authorities for use by the children. Unfortunately, over the past two years due to the deteriorating conditions of some of the hygiene stations, the Unilever Ghana Foundation is interested in finding alternative approaches to reinforce its initial WASH investments and support additional schools, which became the genesis of the partnership with Global Communities.

Global Communities has a proven track record of delivering sustainable solutions for WASH in schools in Ghana over the past nine years, particularly through its projects funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Global Communities has piloted and fine-tuned an integrated approach to WASH service delivery, with a strong social and behavioral revolution communication (SBCC) component, which leads to sustainable WASH interventions in schools. Global Communities’ experience includes provision of seven water-based school latrines in the cities of Accra and Sekondi-Takoradi and 18 KVIP latrines for schools in rural areas in four regions. Working closely with the Ghana Education Service, Global Communities has improved sanitation for more than 5,000 students and is currently constructing sanitation facilities for 116 schools throughout the country.

The cooperation between the parties will take place within the framework of the USAID-funded Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Health (W4H) Program which targets five regions (Greater Accra, Central, Western, Volta and Northern) and runs from 2015 – 2020