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. 

                                                     Roland Derks – The University of Warwick (England)

I volunteered for VPWA for five weeks during the period of June and July 2009. When I arrived at the airport, I received a warm welcome from Hayford Siaw (Executive director of VPWA). Afterwards, we went to the VPWA headquarters. There was the main VPWA office in one building and the sleeping place in another. It was comfortable and the place was situated in a very safe and quiet area. In the office there is a computer with internet connection which can be used at any time. So, don’t think that volunteers are cut off from the world. Furthermore, during my stay, Hayford and I even set up a wireless connection. 

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.

Volunteer Report
Sophie Morley/ 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)
Feedback VPWA


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.