Optical Microscopes for Schools, The Mango Tree Clinic, Taste of Ghana.
News
Pens4Kids
Our tree-planting project relies on school children to look after the saplings for three years after which, if the sapling is doing well, they are given some small gift.
The photos show Bonkron primary school children receiving pens as their reward. We’re very grateful to Pens4Kids for giving us the biros. The children love them.
Heartfelt thanks
When people asked taxi-driver Emmanuel why he worked so hard, he explained that he was saving up to pay for an operation for his little daughter, who had a hole in the heart. Volunteers Dawn and Paul immediately offered to fund it, and here are some pictures of the child, who is doing well after the operation.
A Taste Of Ghana
We warmly invite you to join us at our annual summer party, when London-based Ashanti’s will cook Ghanaian food to thank us for helping their villages.
It will be held from 4pm to 6pm on Saturday 21st July at (or just outside) The Tenants Hall, Underneath Tresham, Lambs Conduit Passage, London WC1R 4RE, nearest tube Holborn.
There will be Ashanti music, gifts and plenty to eat and drink. You will also meet our amazing, cosmopolitan community of volunteers.
Mame Arko comes in first
Congratulations to Mame Martha Arko, who has just won the prize for the best kept latrine in Gyetiase, beating the likes of Opanin Mobe, Amazon Gyambia and Opanin Yaw Adu.
She won a small cash prize, and the runners up won even smaller sums, all to be presented at the next village meeting.
A bumper harvest
The news is that our part of Ashanti’s expecting a bumper crop. A couple of years ago, the land was so dry that crops were destroyed by wildfire. Luckily, things are looking up.
We visited Nana Ababio, Chief of Bimma and a beneficiary under our farm support scheme. He’s growing a mixed crop of corn, yam and cassava, and we’re told he’s very excited about the harvest, which he thinks will be great.
Free school dinners and breakfasts
When we first went to Ashanti, some fifteen years ago, the children were always hungry, and many were severely malnourished. As a result, we started free school lunches for children under five, who were most at risk.
To our surprise, this didn’t seem to make a lot of difference to their health and on investigation we found that, because they were being fed at school, their parents reserved all the food at home for their older brothers and sisters, who weren’t. So we added free school breakfasts to the dinners and now the children look fine.
We are very lucky this year to have found a donor to continue this work on our behalf.
Sunshine at midnight
We are distributing solar lamps to villages in the north of our area of operation. These villages have no electricity, but depend on battery powered lights or kerosene, which is harmful to the health. The lamps have kindly been donated by BasAid.
Jediako’s Falling Down
Dave, our semi-resident teacher-trainer in Ashanti, emails that ‘Jediako School is Falling Down.’ He sent us photos and says its one of the worse buildings he’s ever seen.
In our experience, it’s very hard to raise grants for school buildings. Can anyone out there make a suggestion as to how we could help?
Keeping girls in school
To help prevent girls dropping out of school, we show them how to make six re-useable sanitary towels. Meanwhile, the boys get empathy classes. The project seems to be going really well.
