News

Thanking Freddie

We want to thank to Freddie, our newest volunteer, who appears in the first photo. Freddie ran a half-marathan to collect money to sponsor a village, and then he went to Ashanti to choose which village to help.
He chose Mantukwa, a village of migrants who had walked south from the Sahel to escape the ravages of climate change. Consequently they have almost no possessions and are among the poorest of the poor.
The community were very appreciative of the chance Freddie offered them and worked at top speed to build their latrines before he left the country.
 
We want to join with Mantukwa in saying how grateful we are to Freddie, both for choosing Mantukwa and for choosing us.

Saying Goodbye To Hunger

We’re not big-headed but can’t help thinking our Farm Support Project is brilliant – and indeed there’s evidence that the Ghana government used it as a model for its own national agricultural policy. It consists of giving villages four years training in farming and marketing, and Ghc.500 loans to buy quality agricultural inputs. The loans are repaid with interest after harvest and keep their value, so after four years the money and training can be moved to new villages.
We’re running the project today in thirty villages, and hope within a year it will have eradicated hunger from all of them.
Here are some photos taken in the village of Timber Nkwanta, where Nicholas Aboagye, our Ghana director (wearing the orange T-shirt) is giving out the loans.
On the day after International Women’s Day, we’d like to add that we always favour women farmers, give them special help if necessary and are aiming for the project to be 50:50 men:women.

Desks For Esereso

We recently built a school for Esereso village, as the school the community built themselves blew away in a storm. The school we built was much larger as we knew that as soon as term started more children would come out of the bush and enroll. But we’ve only now managed to raise funds for desks for the children, who used to sit on the floor during lessons.

 

Volunteer in Mampong Hospital

We’re looking for medical staff who’d like to volunteer in Mampong Government Hospital for, say, 2 weeks to 6 months. They’ll have to pay their own fares and vaccinations, but Ashanti Development will provide free board, lodging, washing, internet and transport to and from work.
There are 98 beds in the hospital’s general wing and a further 56 elsewhere. Treatable conditions such as malaria are by far the highest cause of admission to the general wing, followed by anaemia, pneumonia, diarrhoea, typhoid, hypertension and diabetes. There’s a big maternity wing too.
Please tell anyone you think might be interested, and here’s a photo of the hospital.

Christmas Presents

We already showed you some of the things we’re making in Ashanti and selling in the UK. We’re new to this sort of thing, and decided not to sell on-line this Christmas, but to use stalls in street markets.  Now many Christmas markets are being cancelled, so we wondered whether any of our friends on Facebook might be interested in buying. 

We have things such as duvet covers and pillowcase sets, ties, tote bags, fans, cushion covers, hats, oven gloves. They are made by the students in our dressmaking school.  Here’s the price list:  Aprons small £8, large £12; Bags, small £8, larger Tote Bags £12; Duvet covers & pillow sets £45, scrunchies (for hair holding) £5; Ties £10; Fans £20; Sun Hats £20; Cushion Covers £10.

Email your order to [email protected] and we’ll send it off as soon as we can.  You can pay via the DONATE button on our website at www.ashantidevelopment.org, or we’ll tell you where to send a cheque or a bank transfer

 

Seeing Further

After a being closed for a long time because of covid19, our eye clinic recently opened to long queues of patients. We’ve no money for cataract operations right now (we’re saving up) but Agnes, our optometrist, gave a lot of people better sight through prescription spectacles. Here are photos of just some of them. They look pretty happy about their specs.

 

Full stomachs for thirty villages

Sorry for the silence. We’ve been busy doing housekeeping stuff including taking on a new  recruit to help with next year’s farming. This is going to be fantastic. Our farm support project will cover thirty villages for four years and during that time farmers in the thirty communities will get farm training and loans to buy quality farm inputs.

And because they pay back the loan with interest each year after harvest, and each spring we lend them what they’ve just paid back (ie loan plus interest), the loan fund keeps its value in real terms and is ready for us to lend out in the new villages.

Farmers who go through our farm support scheme say their harvest doubles or trebles in size in just one year, and after four it is much much bigger. We’re hoping this project will have a big impact on hunger across the whole area. The picture shows farmers receiving their loans before planting

Ashanti News 44, September 2021

Ashanti Scholarship Scheme, Waiting for Daylight, the Problem with Poverty, and Problems with Plastic

Ashanti News 44, September 21

Christmas Presents Sorted

We’ve been sending our dressmaking school in Ashanti items to copy which we think might make good Christmas presents. The school is run by Kofi, who trains 14 or 15 single mothers and they’re all excited by this new project.
We’re not really up to on-line selling yet, but some of our volunteers are running stalls in different parts of the country in the run-up to Christmas. We also sell most Saturdays in Camden Market, London but best ring us first and check if you’re thinking of going.
Kofi’s making cushion/duvet covers, hats, hairbands, bags and the items in the photos below.

New Project Planning

Nothing much going on in Ghana, but there’s a lot of rain coming down.
Here in London we went to visit the brilliant Orchid Project to ask for some advice on tackling female genital mutilation, which is practised by some of the tribes who are coming south and settling in Ashanti. These include the Fra-Fra, Dagati, Komkomba and probably a whole lot more we haven’t yet identified.
Orchid gave us a video and for starters, we’re going to run this in our clinics for waiting patients, and ask the nurses occasionally to interpret and maybe even to start a discussion. We also decided to try to educate communities about the terrible consequences of FGM at the same time as we’re training them in health and hygiene. It may depend on finding a senior person in the tribe to support us. We’ll have more thoughts later but would welcome any suggestions.
 

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