Dmitry Zhdankin, Rutgers University

December 2011 – January 2012

This winter I had tremendous pleasure to spend a month at VPWA working on research that relates to my bachelor thesis.

First of all, I was impressed by the open-mindedness and flexibility with which HayfordSiaw has approached my proposal to conduct research at his organization. My research involved analysis of microfinance recipients’ personality traits, which required a great deal of concentrated work with individuals that receive funding. Hayford was helpful in ensuring that I receive help from one of VPWA’s employees, which proved essential to the success of my project. Moreover, Hayford permitted complete access to all of VPWA’s records that pertain to microfinance activities. Without this access to organization’s records my work would have been incomplete. I recommend VPWA as an organization for those interested in conducting independent research. The organization’s management was flexible, open minded, and most importantly attentive to the requirements of productive research.

Second, living at the VPWA’s compound was also a great pleasure. The area around the compound was safe and quiet, while the accommodations were comfortable and appropriate for short or even long-term residence. Of course sharing accommodations with volunteers that come to Ghana from every corner of the world was a blast! It was great to spend my evenings with volunteers discussing our work and life in Ghana. The dinners of homemade Ghanaian food also proved to be quiet a delicious experience.

Finally, Ghana is a beautiful country worth discovering. From the shores of Cape Coast to the mountains of Volta Region and beyond, its people are warm and friendly and its nature is fascinating. The country’s most distant corners are accessible by inexpensive transportation and most of the travel destinations are safe, even for single travelers. Hayford and VPWA’s team was also helpful when it came to planning of distant (and not so distant) travels.

Overall, my experience in Ghana was truly one of a kind, largely because of VPWA. Even though my stay was short, I had every opportunity to finalize all of my research tasks, interact with people whose lives are impacted by microfinance, and at the same time discover Ghana, losing myself in the beauty of its nature and the heritage of its culture.

 

Sarah Grant, England - Cambridge University, September 2010.  Education Project Volunteer

I spent September 2010 volunteering with VPWA as a teacher and had such a fantastic experience that I would like to share it with other people. I originally chose VPWA because they seemed a good value, grassroots organisation. For many people the concept of paying to volunteer seems strange but with VPWA you are able to see exactly what your money is used for. Included in the cost are things which make your trip easier such as the airport pick-up and drop-off and a sim card. Some of the fee goes towards your accommodation and food but lots of it is used in a very innovative micro-finance project working with women’s groups. VPWA is a small NGO but this makes the whole time very special as you do feel like you are part of a big family.

My trip

I actually spent the first month travelling around West Africa with two friends before I went back to Ghana to volunteer. I would definitely recommend factoring in as much time as possible to travel, even if it is only a week to see some of Ghana. I was a little bit unusual because I travelled up through Burkina Faso and Mali and then back down Ghana. We had some incredible experiences and highlights included; seeing elephants in Mole National Park (Ghana), Camel trekking and sleeping in the Sahel under the stars (Burkina Faso) and walking in Dogon Country (Mali). We grew to love (sort of) the many hours spent waiting for local transport to fill up and the interesting border crossing experiences but these are things you learn from and help you become more patient people!

These skills were very useful when I came to start my volunteer project because you have to learn to respect the local culture and traditions and not expect things to happen exactly when you want them to! Arriving at the house felt like luxury to me after a month spent backpacking. There were showers and I could finally attempt to get my clothes clean (with Lizzie’s help). It was also nice to settle into my room and the house. I lived in a house with four “lads” who Hayford had told me would make me very happy! I survived this apparently tactical placing and really enjoyed the banter, although the other house on the complex was just next door when I needed to escape. It was great fun living with so many other volunteers from different backgrounds and nationalities and we soon got into our evening routine.

I would get back from school in the afternoon around 3pm and then I would do any preparing for the next day’s lessons or some reading. In the late afternoon a few of us would go running around the town which sometimes involved very young children following us in bare feet and making it look easy while we sweated away. After a refreshing shower we would all sit down together to enjoy the food which Lizzie had prepared for us. She was a great cook and I loved eating the traditional Ghanaian food, in particular red-red (a bean dish), yams and fried plantain. Later in the evenings we would sit and chat at the house or go to one of the local bars (well really a little hut on the side of the road with some very loud Ghanaian music!)

The teaching

I had spent 3 ½ months on my Gap year teaching in Tanzania which did give me some confidence. This was a totally different experience because this time I wasn’t teaching classes of 80 children, but around 15 and I was teaching social studies, as well as English. I found it just as challenging teaching smaller classes because it was easy to see who wasn’t listening and who didn’t understand.

I chose to teach social studies as I am currently studying geography and education but I was very lucky there was a text book as I would have been out of my depth in certain areas, especially Ghanaian history!!! Many of the children were very enthusiastic and we had some very lively debates and discussions, including whether there was a second planet inside earth and whether I thought it was a good thing that Britain had colonised Ghana!

I was pretty much left to myself to decide what I taught and when I taught which was a bit frustrating at times. It was the beginning of term so things were a bit slow to get started but a timetable would have helped! I did have many interesting discussions about the future of the school with the new director.It was a shame that I wasn’t able to stay longer in the school but I think in the time I was there I was able to share some new ideas with the children and they were so much fun to teach. One of the highlights has to be watching a chicken get dissected during a science lesson.

 The Ghanaian experience

There are so many things about Ghana that I really miss and it really is a great country to have explored. I think it is only

Advice

As well as allowing extra time if possible to travel, you should definitely make the most of weekends to go off on trips. My main advice is come ready to be as patient as possible as this will come in very useful. Don’t worry if you haven’t been travelling or to Africa before, there were plenty of people who hadn’t and this wasn’t a problem. With VPWA you are given a briefing and a tour of Accra to help you settle in and Hayford is around if there are any big problems. Also there is a really good system where the volunteer who has been there the longest, has the title of the senior one and is able to help you out with anything. The nice thing about Accra is that there are some very western parts so if you really need to find any luxury home comforts, there are plenty of places set up for expats. Pokuase doesn’t have as many so I was definitely glad that I had my bar of emergency chocolate with me. Other good things to bring are as many books/balls/toys for the children especially as you may be allowed two bags.

I would like to thank Hayford and VPWA for giving me a great volunteering experience and I would recommend them to anyone.

Samantha Koches, VPWA Microfinance Volunteer, October 2010 

Since returning home, I have been bombarded with questions from friends and family: ‘How was it?’, ‘Why did you go?’, ‘What exactly did you do?’. Although I’ve grown accustomed to giving the generic responses, explaining my experience in Ghana with VPWA takes more time and reflection than that. I can honestly say that my experience was great, educational, and worthwhile, and although there were a few tough times during my trip, the positives by far outweighed the negatives.

First, Hayford and Portia were very helpful in the entire application process and preparations for traveling to Ghana. After being accepted as a volunteer, they assisted with the visa application and answered my (and my mother’s) endless questions about the accommodations, arrival, etc. Once I landed in Ghana and made it to the compound without Spider breaking down, I was a little culture shocked, but eventually settled into the VPWA life.

As a volunteer in the microfinance office, I worked with the women who had already received loans from VPWA, as well as with various other women’s groups in the area. On a day to day basis, the work might have been considered slow, but the administrative tasks required to run a finance organisation anywhere in the world aren’t always that thrilling. Two days out of the week, Comfort (the only permanent microfinance employee, and our own personal source of local information), the other volunteers and I stayed in the office to collect repayments. During the rest of the week, we would travel to two or three other women’s groups to teach bookkeeping, which often resulted in teaching basic math and business skills. These lessons were perhaps the most rewarding part of my time with VPWA because they offered a chance to connect with the local women and teach them skills that would outlast my own personal time with them. Although often very difficult due to the language barrier and lack of education, the lessons were pretty successful and at the very least gave us both a chance to exchange cultures. In addition to these lessons, I also was able to make visits to the homes and businesses (sometimes one in the same) of the VPWA beneficiaries. The volunteers and I became friends with a few of these women, and hopefully my memories of them will carry on and vice versa.

Aside from the microfinance work, I was also able to explore and learn about Ghana on my weekend trips. I was able to visit towns all along the coast, almost all the way to the country’s Western border. Ghana has some very nice beaches, although sometimes littered with trash, but nonetheless beautiful. I was also able to go a bit north to Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana, which was very different than Accra! With traveling, however, comes difficulty and frustration. The transportation in Ghana is pretty bad at times, and one piece of advice I can offer future volunteers is that nothing is reliable! Tro tros (the small buses/vans which can take you pretty much anywhere you want to go in Ghana) break down frequently, which can sometimes be fixed in a matter of minutes or more likely, force you to find a new mode of transportation (sometimes even the back of a moto). Although at times these difficulties can be frustrating, the best thing to do is laugh it off and chalk it up to having a real “Ghanaian” experience.

As for some other advice on traveling and living in Ghana, I will offer my personal thoughts on a few other areas.

Living conditions- The accommodations at the VPWA compound are by far the best, compared to other volunteers in Ghana. The electricity (most of the time), running water (albeit cold), and daily dinner are perks you will grow to appreciate. I did not mind having cold showers for nearly 2 months, because the weather was just so hot!         While traveling, most hostels that I stayed in were on the cheaper side, and usually had running water, but don’t be surprised if you are forced to take one or two bucket showers.

Food – Coming from a big city in the US, where you can get pretty much any cuisine you could possibly think of (including Ghanaian food), the food in Ghana may have been the biggest shock for me. Everything is cooked in palm oil, and excessive amounts of it. Dinners usually consist of some sort of rice or yams with an oily/tomato/spicy sauce, sometimes with chicken or goat. In my opinion, this food was good at first, but it got old kind of quickly. That being said, there are definitely great dishes that must be tried, including coco yam stew and red red with fried plantains. You may not like all of what they serve, but you must try it and find out for yourself.

People – The people in Ghana are extremely nice and outgoing. I was skeptical at first, because if you say hello to someone on the streets of Washington DC, they would either slap you or think you are crazy. However, you MUST greet people in Ghana, even with a simple “hello” or “how are you”, or you will be considered rude. Furthermore, if you need help or are lost, usually the locals are happy to help and love talking to you.

Health – Be prepared that at times you might feel sick. As long as you are conscious of what you eat and drink (no vegetables washed in dirty water!), you should be fine.

Keep an open mind and a sense of humor – This is by far the most important piece of advice!!! If you can laugh things off like being called an obruni (white person) 100 times a day and having a 5 hour bus ride take 9 hours, you will learn to look past the minor frustrations and enjoy your time in Ghana. 

Jacob and I also worked with Hayford and Forson on press releases, a health newspaper, and helped write 2 grants.  I felt even more productive working on so many projects while also spending time in the office.  The grant writing process was useful for me personally, and I felt that I was helping the small health clinic and the health newspaper become great things. 

By far the best part of our 4 months in Ghana was the chance to see the beauty, culture, and people of Ghana.  On one of our first weekends in Pokuase we were invited to a funeral and a naming ceremony.  Traveling to Cape Coast, beaches, the rustic north, and Mole National Park were also amazing ways to see life in Ghana.  I appreciated my work and the people I met even more once I experienced the whole of Ghana. 

Nevertheless, thanks to the reduced number of kids, teaching was probably easier for me this way. I have to admit that before coming I had been pretty nervous about this task as I am neither a professional teacher nor am I planning on becoming one. I was all the more surprised about how well the lessons went. The children listened very well and behaved in an extremely respectful way. As a white European girl and the first volunteer ever in His Grace School, I was probably in an even better situation than the other teachers since the children were very interested in talking to me, participating in my lessons and so on. They were so keen that some of them did extra homework and wanted to continue the work during breaks. Furthermore, I witnessed not a single conflict between the children who all seem to get along very well with each other and never started fights.

Mr Simon, who is not the head teacher is a very nice man who is seriously concerned about the children. He has organized my intervention at His Grace School with VPWA and even provided my lunch personally.

In a nutshell, looking back, these weeks in Pokuase seemed to be a perfect introduction to African culture. To be honest, I would have preferred to volunteer somewhere in a remote village in Northern Accra to experience ”real adventure”, but I now think that Pokuase, this friendly little town near Accra, was just the perfect place to be in order to get to know the Ghanaian way of life. I learnt a lot from the students and hope I have also been able to give them something in return.

Sophie Morley and Ben Powell, England

I am a part one architect currently in my second year out post undergraduate study and starting my higher diploma/masters later this year. I worked with VPWA for six weeks in February/March 2009 with another volunteer Ben Powell who is also part one (previous to this I had been doing a placement with an architecture firm in Accra for 4 months). In this period we worked on three projects – the first was an entry to an international design competition entitled ‘Classroom of the Future’ run by Architecture for Humanity through the Open Architecture Network. The brief was to engage children in building design to generate ideas for future classrooms. VPWA arranged for us to partner with a local school, His Grace, where they currently send teaching volunteers.

We organised to come in twice a week for interactive sessions with a group of children aged 11 – 16 we split them into groups and called them architecture firms. It was great fun working with the students and the teachers although quite daunting at first because I had never taught before. Some sessions were a lot better than others, but on the whole the students showed a level of learning that went beyond what we expected (especially as they are used to just copying and memorizing). Our final session consisted of a presentation from each group describing their classroom.  The work will form the basis of a competition entry that we submit with the first prize to have the classroom built at the school.

The second project was helping to develop a proposal for a new sanitation block at Amasaman Township. The current block is crumbling and dangerous to use so urgently needs replacing, we spent some time researching into latrine design and visited a number of local toilets! We met with a representative from Water Aid for more information and consulted a local engineer. We worked with the sanitation department at Ga West Municipality also the planning officer to create a document with three different options for the new block, to be decided upon by the wider community.

The third project was also at His Grace, The design of an ICT centre to serve the school (they currently have no computers/electricity/running water) and the local community. We did a site survey and had meetings with the proprietor, headmaster and the Executive Director of VPWA and will prepare designs on returning to the UK.

While working for VPWA we stayed in the compound that also houses the office for the organisation. The accommodation was basic but comfortable. The benefit with being close to the office was the close support and access to Internet (there is also a TV). The food was mostly local; rice, plantain and yam with a tasty sauce, my favourite was the groundnut soup prepared by Hayford! The diet in Ghana is quite heavy on carbohydrate and it’s difficult to get salad etc out of Accra but there is lots of nice fruit at the market in Pokuase.

Volunteering in Ghana is great – the people are extremely friendly, obviously it’s extremely different and challenging at times but has definitely been quite life changing for me! As well as the projects I completed with the architecture firm and VPWA being in Ghana has given me an opportunity to do some of my own research on low cost housing and indigenous architecture.

VPWA, though not old in my experience of NGO’s in Ghana it is working really well. Hayford is a very dynamic guy with a great knowledge of sustainable development, the fact that it is an indigenous organisation only adds to the feeling you are getting the most of local knowledge and culture. The location of the accommodation is close to Accra (around 45 mins) and the two local towns are very safe and vibrant with some good spots to have a beer at the end of the day!   

Must see places;
•Sleep on the roof of the Shai Brothers guest house in Larabanga before going to Mole National Park.
•Stay at Ghana Spirit near Butre in the Western Region – for the best fish and nicest beach in Ghana
•Stay at Lake Point Lodge at Lake Bosumtwi, great food and atmosphere.
•Kejetia Market in Kumasi seems never ending but is definitely worth it!


Marie Kasper, Belgium

All in all it was a wonderful week! Why?
I have never been to an African country and to start it here in Ghana, with VPWA and this volunteering project was a very good opportunity to get in touch with this culture. It was so good to arrive here and to be from up to the first second with someone who is able to answer all the questions, to show nice places, to introduce another way of life and thinking. I think that was a great first step and I liked it so much to live here in a beautiful, secure and friendly house. I will not forget all the kindness here (and the tasty food neither!). It was a very good idea before we start the project to get an impression of the city and the environment. – Just to situate myself.

For me it has been a new challenge to be in those kind of volunteering project and it was so nice to see how it works in a school like the Grace school. They accepted us in the first moment and all these days they kept on to be interested, open and outgoing – for me that is one of the best ways of inter cultural exchange. They have a totally different school system like for example in Germany, but there is a lot what we can learn from them!

They do not have so much fix rules and they do not hesitate to change everything if they want to. It is good to keep it more open, but not to loose the control. They do not loose it and at the same time they seem to have fun because they dance, sing a lot and are making jokes. What I missed there was some more student materials, just to make the courses more understandable.  They are well educated but they need to think a bit more on their own.
I really loved to teach them and to get more ideas of my way of thinking.
Keep on like this! With your good faith, with fun and energy!
All the best for the future,
Marie.

Cory Kendrick, Dartmouth University, USA  

It’s been a pleasure to spend the past nine weeks volunteering as an Assistant Teacher of English with Volunteer Partnerships for West Africa, in Pokuase, Ghana. I have grown quite a bit from this experience, which has given me a unique look into local life and culture as well as the Ghanaian educational system.

Volunteering with an organization run by a local Ghanaian has had many advantages, equipping me with an experience I doubt I would have had if I’d been working for a foreign-run NGO. Hayford Siaw, president of VPWA, resided in the house with us volunteers and was always available for advice or assistance on all sorts of tasks (from figuring out how to reach the students to helping me get into Accra on my own). He was quite useful before my arrival, and was a great conversation partner for everything from politics to local nightlife once I arrived. I also had the chance to experience a traditional Ghanaian diet – authentic and delicious.

I spent my weekdays teaching at the His Grace School complex, on ACP road in Pokuase, about a fifteen minute walk from the house. I taught English grammar and comprehension to class 5, class 6, and J.H.S. 1, 2, and 3. My days varied in their amounts of teaching time; depending on the number of lessons scheduled per day, I’d teach anywhere from one to five hours a day. The staff and administrators at His Grace were extremely welcoming and friendly, and I enjoyed getting to know a few of them during my time there. The students themselves are, on the whole, excited about learning and a pleasure to teach. As with any challenge, there are ups and downs, but I have learned quite a bit from this experience, both about myself and my own limitations as well as which methods succeed (and fail) in the classroom.

Coming to His Grace School after my privileged, education-centered upbringing in the States was quite a shock; despite the dearth of facilities and materials (though His Grace, as a private school, is much better than local government schools in terms of overcrowding), what surprised me most here was the style of teaching. Most students “learn” by copying down material from the board and memorizing what is lectured to them; the result is a lot of specific, recited information that isn’t thought about critically or really internalized. It took a while for my students to get used to my Western-style teaching (interactive lessons, varied activities, encouraged participation and group-work, concept-checking), but I do feel that they began to grasp the way it worked by the time I left. I even had a conversation with a couple other teachers at the school who had noticed my methods and tried to duplicate them in their own classrooms, with positive results.

I was also quite shocked by the amount of discipline used to control the students and it’s accepted by all the teachers. As a result, the students are hard to control without the threat of a thrashing – I tried my best to command respect in the classroom (for me and for each other) through positive encouragement and confidence in the students.

All in all, my experience at the school has been a memorable one – I was there long enough for the novelty of my placement to wear off (and thus my need to impose some creative discipline of my own), but also long enough to forge strong relationships with the students as well. My time in Ghana has granted me the appreciation for many things I before took for granted – it has been a unique opportunity for me to really experience a culture quite different from my own, and perhaps leave a mark of my own. I will miss Pokuase and all the wonderful people I’ve met during my stay here, and am so glad I decided to spend these last two months in Ghana.