Projects

Have you ever realised that your toothbrush and toothpaste are luxury items?

Twice now, we have been able to bring in a team of dentists to do dental screening, education sessions, and treatments. What is the best prevention for tooth decay? Being able to brush one's teeth! When your family cannot afford a toothbrush or toothpaste, there are obvious obstacles.

Thanks to a campaign run in the spring, we were able to supply all Dekpor Basic School students with a new toothbrush and tube of toothpaste as they headed back to classes.

As part of the Green Ghana initiative, 5 million trees were to be planted in a day. Lucky for us, the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources still had seedlings left at the end of the month!

Linda and Abraham picked up 300 seedlings on June 29th, and the very next day, our students got to work and went out in teams to plant them in needed areas!

300 acacia seedlings were planted on school campus, around the soccer field, and at the river close to the Dekpor Central Shops.

Well, here we are again, thanking friends in Austria!

Philip Schaeffer arrived in Dekpor and stayed for several weeks! With a financial donation from BG/BRG Klosterneuburg, Philip was able to make some wonderful improvements to our Dekpor Basic School's computer lab. Trunking, wires, cables, networking boxes, routers, clips, and more than we can keep track of purchased for our lab. In fact, over half of a kilometre of wires and cables were used to network the 41 computers in our lab! Philip's expertise, over the last couple of years, is what has given us such a wonderful computer lab. This time he directed a group of our graduates to help get this huge undertaking complete! The goal, eventually, is to have internet available at our school's lab — fingers crossed.

In the past, where to go when ya gotta go has been a challenge if you are a shopkeeper at Dekpor Central Shops. Challenge solved!

Thanks to some generous friends, we decided to try out something new for Dekpor--a biodigester toilet! It looks much like a prefab portable johnny-on-the-spot that we see in North America, but it is slightly different.

A biodigester toilet is mechanized and uses decomposition and sedimentation. The waste decomposes in a digestive tank that uses high grade bacteria which converts the waste into either biogas or water. It's low maintenance, too!

How does one put a value on the gift of clean drinking water? It's immeasurable!

About a third of the way into 2021, the aquifer that feeds our three current boreholes ran dry. ZERO drinking water for weeks.

The villagers had no choice but to drink the contaminated stream water (see photo in the album).

This is a page that grows throughout the year, thanks to the many people in the Aurora, Ontario area who like to donate goods!

Our child sponsorship programme is making a huge difference for some extremely needy children. It is a one-to-one sponsorship, where the funds go directly to assisting your sponsored child.

Children receive a nutritious breakfast and lunch, a mosquito net, all school supplies, mandatory school uniforms, exam fees paid for, and medical attention.

This album contains just a handful of their photos. There are many more children desperately needing help.

In 2011, Andrew Sanderson gave a generous donation that enabled DSDO to get the breakfast programme started. Every morning, before school, our fully-sponsored children, as well as some other very, very needy children, stop at Favour's for a nutritious breakfast. Prior to this, several students had to start their day without any food.

Teacher Sponsorships have been an important part of our growth and commitment to improving the quality of education at Dekpor Basic. Starting in 2010, we had two teachers sponsored. Now, in 2013, we have 8 teachers being funded by generous DSDO supporters. One teacher is dedicated to the library, the other seven are in classrooms. Two of our teachers offer adult literacy classes (more below).

During the summer of 2010, eight Canadian educators spent three weeks volunteering at Dekpor Basic School. While living in the community with a local family, they worked with students on literacy and numeracy skills, helped to set up the school's library, shared best practices with local teachers, and participated in community activities.