Touching lives with personal development: the road is International Service

By Abubakari Ibrahim

I have always had this one dream. A dream that looks like a mirage, a goal that looks unachievable, a road that looks impassable: to have an opportunity to make a positive impact on the lives of the vulnerable, the marginalized and women. In order to realise my dream, I decided to volunteer in development projects. I started searching, from one charity organization to another, day by day but to no avail. I began to ask myself over and over again; have I picked the wrong dream? If I could borrow the slogan of the Ghana football giants, Accra Hearts of Oak: “that never say die until the bones are rotting”. I would throw my hands up in despair but I knew I must keep on searching.

One Tuesday afternoon, after lunch, I was reading my book underneath a tree in my house when I suddenly became exhausted. I decided to go to Facebook to relax and chat with my friends. On my wall I saw an advert which said: “Are you interested in volunteering with volunteers from the UK? If your answer is yes then please follow the link below to download the form". I immediately clicked on the link and went to through to a website to read more about it. I was surprised to find that the programme described on the website met exactly the requirements that I was yearning for and, I hoped, would fulfill my dream. I quickly filled the form and attended the assessment day, where I was successful and selected for the programme with ICS and International Service, their charity partner here in Ghana.

Training we delivered to Dundo on record keeping. It's very difficult to train women on complicated subjects, especially those that involve literacy skills, when the women are illiterate. To overcome this we included activities and role plays in our training session to energise the women and help them relate the information to their lives. The picture here shows myself and women from the IGG acting out a role play. The central woman is acting as the Treasurer, I am the Secretary and the other two women have been accused of not paying their monthly contribution. The role play shows how useful it is to have records to clear up these sorts of issues.

I was posted to work on a project in Tolon, which is a small village about 45 minutes away from Tamale in the Northern Region of Ghana. Our project partner is Non-Formal Education Division (NFED), a government department that works in rural communities to run literacy classes for young people and adults who have not received formal education or did not have the opportunity to complete their education. The livelihood project that I was specifically posted to is in the village of Dundo, with the Bangsim Viella Income Generating Group (IGG). Our project plan was to train the women on how to become a cooperative (a cooperative being a group of individuals with a common interest who voluntarily come together to pool their resources in order to improve their economic well-being). The first training was on cooperatives and included the definition, benefits and requirements for registration. At the end of the first training session, which I delivered together with my community pair, I was surprised to hear the treasurer discussing with the Magaziya (the chair of the group) on how they can mobilize the GHC200 registration fee and start the process right away. Is my dream of making positive impact on the lives of these women coming to be fulfilled? Their desire to become cooperative kept on increasing each time we delivered our training sessions. I can’t wait to see the certificate of Bangsim Viella women’s group as a cooperative!

Someone may ask, have you achieved the personal development goal you want to achieve? Improving my confidence in public speaking and within a team were my personal goals before I joined ICS. I am a shy boy naturally and so I find it difficult to speak in public or large groups. This goal seemed very difficult to achieve but as I said earlier never say die…

Speaking the English language in the presence of people who are born with it, or if you like with people who have the language as their mother tongue wouldn’t be easy. As determined as I am to develop my public speaking skills, I pushed myself to contribute as much as possible when we are preparing training manuals or discussing work in the office. My confidence also started developing when we started training the IGGs.

They say it can take only one straw to break a camel's back. So, to break my camel's back, I organized and presented a lecture on plastic waste management, with my roommate, to hundreds of students at the Tolon Senior High School (pictured on the right). The programme went really well and I was surprised after the programme when a colleague came to me and said "ei IB I never knew you are such a good public speaker".

I had the opportunity to also present a radio program at the Simli Radio, as well as the awareness raising on how to become a cooperative at the local market at Katinga. By pushing myself out of my comfort zone and getting involved in as much public speaking as possible, I have already achieved the goal set for myself before the programme even ends.

All the above goals have been achieved a result of the team work we put up for the programme. The team has bonded really well and are superb and this has motivated us to put up our best for the collective interest of the IGGs and each other. 

Let me end by expressing my profound gratitude for the opportunity given me. I say Ayi koooo, Mboo, taali, Naawun ni sab laaara for making my dream come to reality.

A glimpse into Ghana

Post By:  Kaya Cunningham

This is a typical view of the homes of Tolon, on our walk to the NFED office.

 As you are walking, you will hear many cries of “Siliminga Hello! (Siliminga means white person) from the local children that appear almost anywhere that you go. 

The view of the community is amazing, with houses only being made up of 
bungalows and thatched roundhouses.

 Households can be a collection of several roundhouses and a bungalow,
 and occasionally accommodate up to 50 people if they are holding a special occasion!

Tolon is always busy with small stalls

 and food-sellers selling things like fried yam with groundnut powder, 

or beans and rice, and you’ll always 

see women walking with gallons of water balanced effortlessly on 
their heads, travelling back from the water pumps.

 You can find anything you need in Katinga Market. Piles of old clothing for sale, spread out right next to

 food sellers frying up their goods and women selling oranges and banana’s everywhere.

 The most colourful fabric stalls are everywhere, as well as random
 electronic stalls, shoe sellers and bikes.

Tamale Cultural Centre! Here you can purchase the most amazing Ghanaian souvenirs or gifts, 

as well as beautiful original paintings and artwork, 

and even more fabric and pipes. You can find anything you need here, but they wont be having it if 
you try and haggle!

Knowledge is good!

Post By: Sita Violet

Time is flying away so quickly and yet I have settled into Ghana life so thoroughly I feel like I’ve been here for months! I love my team to bits, I really couldn’t imagine a better group of people to share this experience with. My host home is remarkably generous and accommodating, and my counterpart Ayisha is really helpful with teaching me the customs and ways of life at home. So far, being in Ghana has been an immensely positive learning experience and I am feeling really hopeful for the future of this programme and grateful that I am a part of it.

Meeting the Communities.

As we are working in several communities, our group has been split into project pairs to be able to give the best of our attentions to each community. I am working with an income generating group in the Dundo community with my project partner, Issahaku! (We make a great team woo)

             Meeting the community for the first time was a really exciting event, to finally meet the IGG we are here for, but also slightly nerve wracking for me because of the language barriers. How was I going to be able to understand anything, or be understood? Thankfully I am paired with Issahaku, who is brilliantly patient about translating each and every point needed and is happy to translate my questions across. Me and Issahaku had prepared some questions the day before that we felt it would be most useful to know straight away, about Dundo and about the IGG there (Who have named themselves ‘Bangsim Viella’ which translates to ‘knowledge is good’) Knowing more about the challenges they face and the reasons for coming together as this group will really help us to formulate a plan of action when working back in the office later on, and to pass on to the next cohort of volunteers.

                I felt very positive after the introductory visit, the ladies of the group seemed to be very happy that we were there and eager to speak their answers to the questions we prepared, we actually ran over time in our community visit by a quite lot because of how much valuable information we gathered from this one first visit. No bad thing! I think a highlight of the visit for me was at the end, where the women sang a beautiful song together, later which Blaise told me was all about how learning is good, tying into the group name. Also the generous gift to the whole group, of Yams, which I am probably addicted too.

Me and Issahaku with our Dundo IGG group

Katinga Market.

On Thursday, we went to Katinga Market, just outside of Tolon village, to get more of a taste of where the end products of our community will end up, and the goals that the IGG’s are working towards in terms of selling their produce. As soon as we stepped out of the TroTro we could immediately sense just how vibrant and busy the market would be, compared to the quiet streets that we are used to walking down in Tolon. It seems like the market is the weekly hub of activity in the Tolon area, not only a chance to sell your produce and find (almost anything!) that you will need for the week, but a very social event, where friends from different communities can come together.      

Katinga Market

Amongst all the familiar stalls, selling jeans and shoes and other such everyday things, there was many things that us UK volunteers had never seen before, unfamiliar vegetables, beautiful fabrics and super light bowls made out huge hollowed fruit shells. Walking through the chaotically busy but still neatly organised stalls, it was very useful to find sellers of such items as shea butter, as then we could get an example of how our communities may price and present their finished products. We found that Shea Butter seems to be only sold in this particular market in huge quantities, subsequently at a large price. Too much for one person to carry on their own! This gives us a small idea of what kind of things we will need to start thinking about in terms of giving advice to our IGG’s.

Planning our next community visit

Even though it is only week two, I already feel as if I am slowly developing a huge amount of skills. I came into this ICS trip with no previous experience of this specific type of work that we are doing. Baseline research, non-formal education, delivering guided learning sessions and community profiling as an example of all the new things I am learning. I tend to be a very practical learner, learning as I go along, so whilst we are all researching and learning about group and community profiling, being able to put it into practice a few days later is a really valuable thing for me to be able to do. I feel like ICS and international service in Ghana is going to be immensely useful for my future plans, and my confidence into putting them into practice!