Misery – can’t transfer my photos from my iPad to my computer without skilled teenage help. I’m hoping to get some tomorrow (ie teenage help) but meanwhile here’s a SpecSavers video, made for Ashanti Development
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE-IGNKHwpk
There’s a lovely video about Gyetiase by Linda Livni at http://animoto.com/play/EQdLNC6r9JCwlRd0FONPTw
Nicholas’ tree planting competition is getting underway again. Children who are three years away from leaving school pick the saplings they’re going to look after. Prizes for the best tree in three years time.
Here’s a photo of Nana Ab Roy, Chief of Mpantuase Village, dancing at the durber the village held in his honour. The rest of his stay was spent dispensing secondhand specs and testing eyes. He and his team distributed 2,000 specs during the ten days they were there – a fantastic achievement.
We’re currently looking for technical help to post a little video of about what they did, so this is really just a trailer.
SpecSavers visited our Eye Clinic in Gyetiase-Nsuta for ten days in July. They did a fantastic job treating local people, as well as the not-so-local who often came from many miles away. During the short time they were there, they carried out 1,300 eye tests and dispensed over 2,000 spectacles.
Eye health is a particular problem in Ashanti, and SpecSavers’ intervention must have brought an enormous improvement to the quality of life of hundreds of people. Here’s the report that team leader Ab Roy sent to SpecSavers head office: Specsavers Ghana Charity mission 2013 (pdf)
Saturday was the day of our sponsored walk – a 8-mile stroll down the canal from St Pancras in central London to Limehouse. The city looks different from this perspective, and walkers were very cheerful and interested in what they saw, and specially pleased to be able to go home by riverboat. Ashanti Development is enormously grateful to them all, and for 
the money they raised – so far over £1,200 with more to come in.
The photos are of microcredit workers from Adutwam village. Each has had business training and produced a business plan, and has been given a loan of Ghc.200 to Ghc.400. We’re so impressed by Adutwam that we’ve even offered the whole village a loan to buy itself a food processing machine (one of the pix below is of the shed that will house it).
Our microcredit project now extends across eleven villages. We lend at 15% pa interest, and have never yet had a bad debt. By contrast, in Accra loans are on offer from 40 – 180 %. Woman who can’t repay their loans have been known to commit suicide in these circumstances.
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Bimma is the second of our villages to be given a computer room, this time thanks to the generosity of the Leigh Rotarians. Bimma is waiting for some 2nd hand laptops to be delivered but meanwhile we’d be really grateful if anyone could provide any more. Our volunteers can clean and repair them, and will pick them up from most places too.
Unfortunately, our plans for the clinic roof didn’t work out and we’re being forced to use aluminium roofing sheets to keep out the rain. It’s a lot of work, but at least we’ll be waterproof from now on.
