Taking the women waste pickers through capacity building development
Women are the embodiment of immense courage, exceptional excellence, highly capable of bringing about positive change in every field they find themselves in.
In celebrating this year’s international women’s day (8th March), Recycle Up Ghana sponsored by The Ghana Recycling Initiative by Private Enterprises (GRIPE), Voltic Ghana partnered with Premier Waste Consult to celebrate fifty women waste pickers in the Ashanti Region.
The program was themed Women In Waste Management; Celebrating The Contributions Of The Everyday Female Waste Picker . The program commenced with the Executive director of Recycle Hub Ghana Abdul Rahim Shaibu-Issah introducing the works of Recycle up Ghana and also stressing on the importance of having an eco friendly and clean environment.
This was followed by a health talk by Dr. Frank Adjei of the community health based medical travellers, where he talked on the need for the women to take maximum care of their health and also make a balanced diet a routine in their daily meals. He also spoke at length on safe practices for women when it comes to contracting HIV/AIDS and how to avoid the disease. Dr. Frank shared some health tips with the women on the prevention of diseases in their line of work and how to protect themselves from contracting or spreading COVID-19.
Health Screening exercise for the women waste pickers
Afterwards, there was a stakeholders engagement with the women. This was done to understand the challenges they go through and also together find possible solutions for these problems.
Most of the challenges the waste pickers highlighted were mainly centred on the problem of not having their waste collected on time and also not having a standard pricing mechanism for their plastic bottles and water sachets. Edmond Arthur Brown, the CEO of premier waste management, made himself and his company readily available to help these women in the collection of the waste by picking these plastics from the women with tricycles in order to mitigate the cost of transport for these women.
Engagement with Premier Waste Recycling and Recycle Up! Ghana during the stakeholder engagement session
The stakeholder engagement was immediately followed by an interactive soft skill training session which was mainly on setting effective goals, financial discipline and management practices.
The female waste collectors had free health screening which consisted of a Hepatitis B screening, breast screening and a physiotherapy session. They also received packages of reusable hand gloves, reusable nose masks and 1 gallon of liquid soap each by kind courtesy of Voltic Ghana and GRIPE.
The Executive Director of Recycle Up! Ghana presenting Covid-19 PPEs to the Leaders of the various pickers groups
A representative of the waste collectors thanked Recycle Up! Ghana, Premier Waste Consult, GRIPE and Voltic for the support shown to them. She further called for more engagement programs with them.
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