OUR FUTURE PROJECTS

Project Strategy

Project strategy includes providing a comprehensive questionnaire to the students and conducting,  easy competitions, and award schemes for groups and individuals in our educational setup with the support of donor funding to those who will excel and show full commitment to strategically and psychologically  prepare the minds of their to introduce, At the household level, poor hygienic practices by individuals and communities which are compounded as a result of insufficient and ineffective education will be addressed

Listing of Project Activities

• Support the cleaning and dredging of Fosu Lagoon on Cape Coast
• Restoration of Bird Heritage and Mangrove at Fosu lagoon
• Smart Climate Change Ambassadors and clubs in the schools,
• Conduct Climate Smart Agriculture and Green Housing Technology projects
• Integrate and organize smart Sports activities and competitions in and among the schools
• Conduct clean-up exercises and initiate landscaping
• Introduce waste separation in the schools
• Provision and introduction of renewable energy in the schools eg. Solar lights, lamps, and mobile phone charging system
• Initiating commercial recycling station to recycle separated waste collected from various schools in Central Region to produce products like waste bins, buckets, and bowls, organic fertilizer, paper-based recycled products such as cups, pencils, package boxes, etc…
• To Develop appropriate technologies, practices, and DIY to avoid general contamination eg. of groundwater
• Conduct programs and projects for the schools during world earth and environmental day

Expected Results

Within a decade and a half, wrapping and packing have changed from bio-degradable, like leaves to paper to thin –film, plastic, and now to more dense styrofoam and plastic, similarly drinking water, vending has evolved from the bucket–and–cup to a thin film, plastics and now to more dense plastics of sachet and bottled mineral water.

These trends are increasing with our young growing population and consequence of increased mortality due to poor environmental sanitation practices. This is becoming common practice and placing untoward pressure on our entire environment in the region and the country as a whole. It’s sad to state that Ghana is placed ………..among the dirtiest countries in Africa. With this intervention, we believe in systematically establishing and grooming the youth right from the education sector to become ambassadors in their localities and putting pressure on our Authorities to enforce the by-laws to combat this menace.

1. The youth will come to terms with the effects of climate change to improve their standard of living in the long term
2. Improve environmental and sanitation practices such as widespread littering, dumping refuse waste in drains and open gutters
3. Make a great impact in the homes and communities in which they live
4. Sustain and improvement of waste management to reduce environmental morbidity and mortality
5. Awareness creation to understand and improve on health and nutrition lifestyle, conscious of recognizing healthy foods
6. To understand better health care with priority attention to Poor environmental and sanitation effects and other pandemic diseases such convinced 19 mitigation and adaptation of safety protocols.
7. Understand the importance of the R5 concept
8. Most importantly Improving and making sustainable progress on the attitudes and behavior of individuals, and communities towards the environment to reduce the increasing disease burden as a result of PESAC(Poor Environmental and Sanitation Condition)households
9. That every school adopt strict environmental practices and be consistent with the national environmental policies

How different I earlier projects?

Since the 2012 Establishment, the Ecoscout Movement of Ghana has embarked on very remarkable programs and projects to sensitive the community to combat the above-stated menace to improve the overall poor sanitation and environmental attitudes  The Declaration and Launching of 3 months of sensitization and Educational programs and projects under the motto. Cape Coast goes green and clean was successfully inaugurated  We initiated our pilot with 120 students n 2014-2018as Climate change Ambassadors from 4 schools, namely Philip Quaque Boys school (which is the oldest primary school in West Africa), Antem Junior Secondary School, St. Augustine’sPractice and Bakatsir Junior Secondary School between 2012 to 2017.

Some of the Projects include:(Visual, audio, and video evidence are available)

• Float in the inner city of Cape Coast announcing our presence and creating awareness of the effect of climate change in Conjunction with Coastal TV
• Tree planting and growing around the Fosu Lagoon, Assase Pa, and their various schools
• Poetry competition against the state of our Lagoon and drama by o c man group displayed amazing showcase of education portraying the current situation, behavior, and attitude towards the environment in Cape Coast South. (The poem entitled ‘THE SOUND’ was written by the Chairman of Ecoscout. The objective was to address the poor state of the Lagoon as well as draw the attention of the Authorities using the voice of the youth.
• Workshop and Visit to Organic farmland and introduction to DIY organic fertilizers
• Beach Clean Up exercises.
• Coastal TV youth programs on Climate Change.
• Successfully planted and grown Royal Palm trees and tropical almonds on the stretch from the King’s palace to the Cape Coast Castle under the ‘motto plant and name a tree’.
• Under this motto we have successfully planted and grown more than 20 trees in various households across the community of which people take shelter from the daily hot weather, sell their produce, and enjoy fresh oxygen.
• After collecting over 600 signatures in the attempt to petition the Metropolitan Assembly to enforce the Bylaws it became clear that although our bylaws existed they have not been gazetted as such and could not be implemented.
• Ecoscout took a bold initiative to collaborate with Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly Chief Executive Officer Mayoress Hon. Priscilla Arhin and The Central Police Command of Cape Coast unit to Gazette the existing environmental By-laws of the assembly which gave birth to combating, enforcing the bylaws leading to the arrest and prosecution of sea sand winners and open defecation on the beach. The results were clear to see.
• Lots of Media interactions including radio programs, news daily, and internet presence including other programs including Tourism improvements were undertaken.
• Ecoscout Refurbished the old Bakano Roundabout and converted it to a green landscape roundabout which triggered other areas like the Petrol district, London Bridge, and Tanti Station constituency to emulate Ecoscout to do the same which are all visible till today.
• These works earn Ecoscout to become a member of the Environmental and tourism subcommittee of the Cape Coast Assembly of which many workshops were undertaken all in the attempt to improve Climate change
• Ecoscout also earned to become a member of the committee in Cape Coast Ghana Sister partnership with Bonn-Germany. A laudable project was initiated to dredge the Fosu Lagoon, a research center was built at a community center close to the lagoon. Initiation of research results and implementation of projects to improve the situation and enhance the economic value of the lagoon were not realized.
• Again upon petitioning the then Minister of Central Region in 2015 Hon, Aquinas Quansah, a military force was mobilized to stop the massive sea sand winning activities that were going on at Elmina. Those activities had already caused a lot of damage to existing beach resorts eg. Elmina Bay Hotel and the households close to the beach along the coastal belt.
• A of our main waste managcompaniesompany Zoom Lion assigned a company called subsidiarSoilil to undertake beach clean-up exercises. All the waste collected was openly and with impunity buried at the shore of the Cape coast beach. There are more than 200 holes with about 4ft deep x and 4 ft diameter scattered across the beach front…Ecoscout went undercover and took pictures and evidence of this practice and summoned the Regional Director of the waste Management Zoomlion in one of our meetings to come and answer for that Environmental crime. After the meeting, they were asked to dig out all the waste and dispose of them properly. After 3 – 4yrs I can say with Authority that those plastic wastes, fishing nets, gallons, pet bottles, hospital waste, syringes, etc are still buried there. We can easily exhume today because they will not degrade until the next 100yrs or more. This affected immensely our initiative to replant about 500 coconuts along those bare stretches of the coastal line. It is true coconuts will not grow in plastic soil.
• In collaboration with the King of Abura Nana Kodjo Addae iv in Cape Coast North, initiated 2 days workshop with the community under the theme’ let us drive Malaria away’.We took this great opportunity to create awareness of Climate Change after the program Ecoscout Distributed 100 seedlings of Moringa to the participants who were mostly Moslems and put very great value on Moringa.

See Documentations, media files, Galleries, and Videos for evidence of past works and achievements of the Ecoscout Movement of Ghana.

LESSONS MADE & THE WAY FORWARD

Ecoscout Movement of Ghana after 5yrs of operation and 3 years of observations we have come to realize upon careful analysis, that the current trend is that our poor environmental and sanitation situation has worsened. The sea erosion and salt intrusion are uncontrollable living no option to construct a massive expensive sea defense from the Cape Coast Castle to Bakano, which will continue to Ola, whereas The Elmina Sea defense is ongoing to meet the defense from Cape Coast. The implication for the fisher folk community is unprecedented. Children, especially young children, live their lives at a faster pace than adults. Consequently, anything harmful in the environment is bound to have a relatively greater impact on them. For example, young children breathe at twice the rate of adults. In polluted environments, their risk of respiratory infections, such as pneumonia, or conditions such as asthma, is likely to be far higher than for adults.

• Our current strategy with the help of the 2109 population statistics has motivated us to reorganize, and re-awaken Ecoscout to utilize our past success records with our climate change ambassadors to re-strategize to adopt Smart projects and programs with the schools from primary to tertiary.
• We shall consider reaching out to youth groupings in the churches and mosques. This is another place where our message could be successfully carried out. Investing in children and youth as part of our climate plans on mitigation and adaptation
• We believe that since Ghana’s young population forms about 57% with this initiative we are sure to improve with time the mentality and behavioral change of the people to improve our environment and sanitation.
• We strongly believe in Children and youth empowerment programs to achieve a lot of attitudinal changes, imparting knowledge and alerting through activities causes of global warming.
• We will create an international partnership with exchange programs with Climate Change groups across the world.
• Children deserve to live in a world free from the life-threatening effects of climate change. Given the overwhelming scientific evidence on the dangers of climate change, and the clear opportunities we have for altering its course, there is no excuse for not acting ambitiously.

We should be impacting and grooming conscious youth who are the leaders of tomorrow to make this world a better place for all and generation unborn

We, therefore, appealing to all donors, corporate bodies, philanthropists, climate change advocacy groups, Various NGOs, etc to partner with us since our young and energetic youth of Ghana are so smart and ready to take the bull by the horn to ensure we give respect to nature, improve on our livelihood to make the purpose God made us humans be fulfilled to the Glory of Mother Earth.

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

QUESTIONNAIRES will be distributed to selected schools.

• 5 primary schools
• 5 Junior Secondary Schools
• 5 Senior Secondary Schools
• 1 Technical school
• 1 Vocational school
• Technical University
• Cape Coast University (Environmental faculty)

Cost Analysis:

• Share about 500 questionnaires to the Children and Youth 20 each to 5 selected schools
• Each school’s questionnaire shall be examined and awards, Certification issued. This will also include the distribution of PPES to our climate change Program Participants.
• Each school will be asked in collaboration with an interested teacher and the School administration to form Ecological Clubs.
• Special Waste bins will be distributed to the schools and practice on waste separation will be introduced. Bio or organic fertilizer from the school waste will be organized
• Ecological clubs will be encouraged to collaborate with the school authorities to create school farms and plant trees.