As the national coordinator of IDEAS for US in Ghana.  I am happy to present our first activity in 2016.

 I established Intellectual Decisions on Environmental Awareness and Solutions (IDEAS) in the University of Cape Coast and on the 2nd of March, 2016, we were present at the APEWOSIKA Junior High School in Cape Coast to educate the upcoming youth in the importance of environmental sanitation and how relevant it is to their health. 

I am happier to have been able to mentor undergraduate students to handle this environmental education program entirely. 

The Headmistress of the institution, upon our visit, emphasized on the habitual practice of littering by school children and thus, she is very glad that IDEAS For UCC has come to enlighten the students on such an issue. The school is primitive, lacks computer facilities and students were not familiar with computers and internet. It was difficult explaining Tunza to these kids but we hope to deliver more effectively using images and videos. 

For a highly populated government school, the students were separated into 3 batches to allow smooth communication and interaction.

The workshop was mainly focused on sanitation and health. Some of the questions and interaction that went in between the children and our team included: how to ensure environmental sanitation and the effects of littering on human health and society. To help these children better understand the connection between their daily activities and environmental sanitation, Emmanuel Marfo - an undergraduate student and member of the IDEAS For UCC team, elaborated that sanitation starts with personal hygiene and progresses to your environment, that is keeping your desks and classrooms clean, proper waste handling and disposal, no littering, disposing waste safely, sweeping your environments among many other practices.

Isaac Abugri (Co - Speaker at the workshop) of the IDEAS team highlighted on the relation between littering and human health. He said, ?littering expose waste to domestic insects such as houseflies who settle on the unhealthy parts of the waste and later come into our homes and settle on our foods and items – which makes us ill. If all waste is kept in our dustbins, our environment will be clean and we will be healthy. Littering also causes our gutters to choke which causes flooding. If you don?t want to flood, do not litter?.

We could see the joy on the faces of our young siblings after being taken through the importance of sanitation at home, school, church and everywhere. We strongly believe that these kids will share what they have learned from this workshop with their colleagues at home and through that, it may cause an attitudinal change within the school community.