November 2024, Ghana

In November 2024, I returned to Frankadua for the next stage of Village Projects Foundation’s relationship with the community: completing Project Agbe and providing a sustainable supply of clean drinking water for local residents and the children of Retca School.

These regular visits also give us an opportunity to inspect our previous projects, speak to the people who use them and understand whether they are continuing to deliver the benefits we originally intended.

For Village Projects Foundation, completing a building or installing a facility cannot be the end of a project. A photograph of a finished classroom, library or water tank may look impressive, but the true measure of success is what happens after we leave.

Is the facility still being used? Has it been properly maintained? Has it genuinely improved the lives of the people it was designed to support? Are there any problems that need addressing?

Returning to Frankadua allows us to answer those questions honestly.

It was therefore brilliant to visit Retca School again and see the library and computer laboratory we had completed through Project Retca in 2022. The facilities had become part of everyday life at the school, giving the children access to books, learning materials and technology that had previously been unavailable to them.

One particularly encouraging discovery involved the books we had supplied through Project Nunana. In our enthusiasm, we had collected and delivered more books than the school could realistically use. This could easily have resulted in the surplus sitting in storage and eventually going to waste.

Instead, Retca School had donated some of the additional books to other schools in the surrounding area.

It was wonderful to see that the reach of the project had extended beyond the school we had originally supported. Books donated by people in the UK were now being used by children across several local schools. Rather than guarding the surplus for themselves, the people at Retca had recognised an opportunity to help neighbouring communities.

That was a genuine sign of success.

It also demonstrated why we want local communities to take ownership of the projects we support. Village Projects Foundation may provide funding, resources and volunteers, but local people understand their needs far better than we ever could. When they are trusted to manage a project, its benefits can develop in ways we may not have originally anticipated.

Our main purpose for returning in November 2024 was Project Agbe.

For many people in the UK, access to safe drinking water is something we rarely have to consider. We turn on a tap and expect the water to be clean, available and safe to drink. In Frankadua, the situation had been very different.

The community had experienced long-standing problems with both water scarcity and water quality. Some residents had to spend considerable time collecting water from distant sources, while the safety of that water could not always be guaranteed.

Contaminated water creates a serious risk of waterborne illness, affecting children’s education, adults’ ability to work and the health of the entire community.

The children at Retca School were particularly affected. Despite the progress made through the library and computer laboratory, the school still lacked a dependable supply of clean drinking water.

I remember so clearly how dehydrated I got in the heat in Ghana, in a matter of hours. We needed to do something to support the student, teachers and community's health better. The current "clean" water provision was little plastic bags of water The bags would be biten open with your teeth, drunk and then thrown into the local bush. Not only is the water crisis a health problem, it is a plastic problem too.

Before work began, extensive planning was completed alongside local leaders and members of the community. It was important that the solution was appropriate for Frankadua, could provide water throughout the year and would remain useful long after our visit had ended.

The central part of the project involved drilling a borehole. The drilling eventually reached a depth of 140 metres before a sustainable underground aquifer was found.

Reaching that depth was a significant achievement. Water located so far beneath the ground is naturally better protected from many of the contaminants found at surface level. More importantly, the aquifer provides a reliable source that is far less vulnerable to seasonal changes and periods of limited rainfall.

Finding water was only the first stage. It then had to be made safe for the community to use.

The water is put through a purification process to ensure it meets the required health and safety standards. Once treated, it becomes potable water that can be safely used for drinking and cooking. This is essential in reducing exposure to harmful bacteria and helping prevent illnesses associated with contaminated water.

To store and distribute the purified water, a strong concrete platform was constructed to support a 3,000-litre polytank. Elevating the tank creates sufficient water pressure to distribute the supply effectively while also making it accessible to the school and wider community.

After the drilling, construction and purification systems had been completed, Frankadua finally had immediate access to a reliable source of safe drinking water.

Seeing the water flow for the first time was an incredibly proud moment. There is something about watching water fly out of the ground while we all drenched ourselves which was quite satisfying.

Unlike some projects, where the impact may take months or years to become fully visible, the benefit of clean water is immediate.

The project will save people time, but its influence goes much further than convenience.

Easier access to water allows residents—particularly women and children, who are often responsible for collecting it—to spend more time on education, work and family life.

Safe water also reduces the likelihood of illness, meaning fewer missed days at school and fewer occasions when adults are unable to work or care for their families.

These were all things that I didn't initially think of, but massively benefical parts of the project.

For Retca School, Project Agbe represented another major improvement to the environment in which the children learn. The school now had a library, a computer laboratory and a clean water facility. Each project addressed a different need, but together they were helping to create a safer and more supportive place for the children to receive their education.

The trip also reinforced the importance of building long-term relationships rather than approaching international development as a series of isolated interventions.

When we first arrived in Frankadua, we could not address every challenge at once. We began by listening, teaching and learning about the community. Project Retca then provided the school with books and technology. Project Nunana increased access to educational resources, with its surplus books eventually helping other schools. Project Agbe addressed the fundamental need for clean water.

Each visit has helped us understand the community better and identify what support could create the greatest lasting benefit.

Returning also creates accountability. The people who donate to Village Projects Foundation deserve to know that their money has produced more than a temporary result.

We remain interested in how the facilities are being used and whether they continue to meet local needs. Those ongoing relationships are what allow honest conversations to take place. If something is broken, unsuitable or no longer working, we want people to feel able to tell us. It is far better to discover a problem and address it than to continue presenting a project as a success simply because it looked good on the day it opened.

Fortunately, this return to Frankadua gave us plenty to celebrate.

The library and computer laboratory were continuing to support the students. The surplus books from Project Nunana had found new homes in neighbouring schools rather than being wasted. Most importantly, Project Agbe had provided the community and Retca School with a dependable source of clean, treated water.

The success of the trip was not simply the completion of another piece of infrastructure. It was seeing how several years of work had begun to connect.