World Vision, Kings Hall Media Celebrates World Toilet Day With Congregants

The Kings Hall Media in collaboration with World Vision International has marked this year’s World Toilet Day and Universal Children’s Day with congregants of Twereboa English Assembly branch of the Church of Pentecost to educate the public to adopt best practices on proper sanitation and hygiene.

The WASH Technical Coordinator of World Vision, Yaw Atta Arhin said the decision to celebrate the event in the church was to use the pulpit to sensitize Ghanaians to change their behavior and adopt positive sanitation change behavior which will improve their health and wellbeing of children of this country.

He indicated that his outfit has developed a WASH Sermon Guide which was foreworded by the Chairman of the Church of Pentecost and therefore deemed appropriate to pretest the document with congregants of the Church of Pentecost in Dansoman on the occasion of the World Toilet Day.

Mr. Arhin noted that the document aim to raise awareness and the importance of owning a latrine and practicing proper sanitation by stopping open defecation which has serious health implication.

“WASH Surmon Guide is a document that indicates that when preachers want to preach on water, sanitation and hygiene, sometimes they ask themselves how to start. The Guide tells you the biblical quotations on what God said about water, sanitation and hygiene, and how you can also influence your congregation and government,” he stated.

According to him, they are also coming up with Islamic version for Muslim communities and groups who want to promotion water, sanitation and hygiene in their localities.

Mr. Arhin added that plans are in place to design children version which will be simplified for children to read and understand the essence of personal hygiene and protection of the environment from pollution.

He called on government to increase sanitation financing and prioritise the sector because it has multiplier effects on health, education, food security, poverty reduction and socio-economic development.

“Analysis of the WASH sector budget has never reached 1percent of the total GDP but as an important sector government must do something about it. Unfortunately, we also hear that this year’s budget for the WASH has been reduced and we are going to engage government to see how we can prioritize this sector so that other sectors can also benefit,” he intimated.

The WASH Coordinator stated that “If we don’t track government progress they will go to sleep and because government has also launched the National Sanitation Champaign which we have commended we will keep government on its toes.”

He stressed that his outfit will roll out a programme with the Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS) to monitor what government has promised and how much it has delivered to the people of the Ghana.

The Chief Executive Officer of Kings Hall Media Limited, Emmanuel Addai emphasized that the essence of the program was to reach out to the world through the church.

“We are using this occasion to reach out to the church where biblical instructions are read back to them for them to realize that it is a sin against God and mankind to defecate in polythene bags and throw it behind somebody’s window or backyard,” he stated.

Mr. Addai indicated that a research has shown that God actually gave several instructions to mankind which if we had followed properly wouldn’t have had our environment polluted with human excreta and materials.

“It is out of this research that World Vision developed the WASH Sermon Guide which contains biblical facts and passages that supports the fact that human beings must live in a clean and healthy environment,” he stated.

According to him, more than 70percent of Ghanaians are Christians who mostly listens and respect men of God.

“So we believe that when pastors are supported with the Guide to deliver their sermons their congregation will practice the word,” he opined.