Community Entry by Castro, Emily, Abraham and Kenny

Kawula! (Hello) Greetings from Cohort 5

Catherine and Natty in Tolon

We are cohort 5 of International Service, in partnership with NFED (Non Formal Education Division) Tolon, working closely with various income generating groups (IGG’S) in six communities including Tolon; Dundo, Wayamba, Yoggu, Dimabi and Kangbagu. We aim to help them sustain their co-operative status, in order to enable them to generate income and increase their livelihoods as a group.

Community entry refers to the process of initiating, nurturing and sustaining a desirable relationship with the purpose of securing the community interest in all aspect of a programme: We, the members of NFED-Tolon, wish to invite you to walk with us through our community journey.

Castro and Francis in Yoggu

‘What do IGG’s do?’ was a prominent question running through the minds of our volunteers when we initially discovered that we were to do a community entry on the first Wednesday of our placement. Therefore, we researched about our respective IGG’s and their communities before going: thereby enhancing our knowledge and allowing us to enter with an informed perspective on what our groups had achieved so far.

Matthew and Josephine in Kangbagu

Upon arrival in our communities, we were overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of those greeting us. They were delighted and appreciative that we were working alongside them once again, in an attempt to enable their newly formed co-operatives to evolve. We were warmly welcomed by the community members who invited each pair to dance with them, as they sang for us. The excitement displayed by our IGG’s made our team increasingly enthusiastic to begin working with them, and a sense of unity was immediately apparent. We even had two of our female volunteers jokingly betrothed to two chiefs- Mounah Catherine to the Kangbagu chief and Chloe Searl to the Dundo chief!

Another interesting aspect of our community entry was that we used it as a platform to learn new things about our IGG communities: through our project partner (NFED, Tolon) we had the opportunity to work with one of the most talented music composers in NFED, the deputy district director, Mr Tia, who taught as songs such ‘Maraba yee, Maraba ngomya’ which translates to ’Welcome’ in Dagbani.

Abraham and Emily in Wayamba

One cultural difference that we encountered when entering our communities was time keeping. Time in general is a major problem faced in Africa, and Ghana is not excluded. GMT which stands for ‘Greenwich Mean Time’ is commonly translated here to ‘Ghana man time’, which means Ghanaians usually arrive later than the arranged time. Issues such as this have helped us to better understand cultural differences that we may face while on placement, and therefore we have been able to openly communicate with our IGG’s in order to reach a compromise.

Chloe and Kadir in Dundo

Several of the communities that we entered had no running water or electricity. Therefore, the high expectations of what International Service could do to help were difficult to handle, as we aim to provide IGG’s with the knowledge and skills to be self-reliant, rather than with funding. However, we were able to convey both our short term and long term aims and outline our educational approach which allowed group members to trust that we were there to make a difference that is sustainable. The issues that many of our IGG’s faced, inspired us to fully commit to helping them as much as possible over the next three months in order to ensure a positive change is made.