Media Centre for Volunteer in Ghana

Benn Jordan

I love that I hear the volunteers using the word WE when they talk of GVI. There is a real feeling that this is their project, which it is! We are still moving towards our ultimate goal at the moment, whereby our volunteers takeover most of the classes, allowing the “teachers” to teach their own classes, and we are at a stage where all of the volunteers in all schools have complete autonomy over some individual lessons. We are using a weekly planning tool and teacher meetings to plan for the upcoming week and in particular the next day. I believe we are now truly a part of the local teachers mindset when they plan their lessons. They know we are here for the whole school day and they know we want to take our own classes, and more importantly the volunteers have put in so much great work and done such a good job that the teachers respect their lessons.

Food subsidies

We have started subsidising the school meals and providing all of it when the government fails to provide! We are now providing chicken to the schools 2 times a week. We are also doing soups quite often, full of vegetables and rice and chicken to keep the kids full. We purchased plastic bowls and cups for all the schools to make the soup easier to manage for the kids. We also buy much more vegetables and try to vary the selections each day. Of course, the daily fruit continues! The kids are happy, the food is excellent, and the introduction of many more vegetables can only be good for them.

Electricity

We were lacking electricity in a number of classrooms so we bought wiring etc and got parents to wire up the classes missing electricity and to install power points and lights where necessary.

Jardin makeover

The kids between the ages of 3 and 6 (12 of them) were jammed into the storeroom at Urcusiqui for their classes. This was a horrible environment for anyone to work in, especially kids in the development stages of their lives so we cleared out the storeroom, painted the room bright colours, drew pictures, stripped the paint off the windows, added power points and a light, and put in a whiteboard mounted on the wall. We also stocked up their resources with exciting and interesting colours and pens and paper etc.

Ponchos for all children

After the rainy season began we noticed that the kids were coming to school soaking wet after walking up to 2 hours in the rain to school. Very few of the kids had wet weather clothing and the cold weather had a noticeable impact in terms of sickness and unhappiness. Sitting in school, hungry, tired and wet was not a great start to the day.

We sourced some really excellent quality waterproof ponchos and purchased these for every kid in all 3 schools. The children were ecstatic with the purchases and were wearing them around school on the day we handed them out, even though it was a bright sunny day. We expect that it will make the rainy season much more bearable, reduce sickness rates and improve safety in trafic, due to the bright colours.

New comedor in Huayrapungo

We have purchased materials for the building of a new comedor for Huayrapungo, so the kids have somewhere to eat, and to meet as a total group. We have also purchased a new roof for one of the classes at Urcusiqui. We also repaired windows and purchased wiring for installation of lights.

Soccer goals

We have purchased two strong soccer goals with metal nets for Urcusiqui. These get used all the time. Not just for soccer, but also as climbing frames and seats to eat lunch on top of. Not a day goes by when they are not used.

Shelving

We got a large wooden shelving unit for Urc for the kids to store their text books and library books and also with a lockable cupboard for the local teachers and volunteers to store things that they dont want the kids to walk off with.

Cooking utensils

Two volunteers bought new cooking equipment in two schools. This means that we have new pots, knives, chopping boards spoons ladels etc for the mothers or the volunteers to cook with.

Dental hygiene

We purchased toothbrushes and toothpaste for each kid and introduced a brush your teeth after lunch ritual to improve dental hygiene in the communities

Children’s field trips

We used money kindly donated by 2 past volunteers in Urcusiqui to fund a field trip for every child at Urcusiqui to go to the Peguche Waterfalls in Otavalo on a bus. We also took them for a picnic lunch in Otavalo during the afternoon of games and playing. This was a real highlight for the kids and they still talk about it at school. For some of the kids it was their first trip to Otavalo.

Day of the Dead

A major holiday for the indigenous in Ecuador is around the day of the dead where families pay their respects to their dead relatives and offer them gifts of freshly made bread. We got heavily involved in this and hosted bread making days for all the families of the kids at the schools. We purchased all the materials and the kids and their parents and the volunteers made bread of various shapes and sizes and we cooked them in nearby clay ovens. This was a great day for all and a great opportunity for us to interact with the parents of the kids.

Christmas celebrations and presents

We noticed that xmas is quite a big deal in Otavalo, so we introduced a xmas celebration project in the schools over a period of 1 week. This involved getting christmas trees for the schools, buying lights for the trees and resources for the kids to make their own decorations to put on the trees. In one school it became a competition in 2 classrooms to see who could make the flashest xmas tree and decorations. In this week lesson planning was based around the christmas theme. On the last day of the school year for GVI we gave all the children a xmas giftbag with various goodies for them inside. This was a GVI thank you and merry christmas to the kids. The parents came in on this day too and we made a bit of an afternoon of celebration and a chance for us to bond with the families some more.

Interschool footy match

To encourage interactions with other communities we had a day when the children from Huayrapungo came to Urqusiqui and played a football match against the other school. Although there was not a lot of mixing between the schools, the match was talked about for weeks leading up to it, and both schools selected their team and practised every chance they could. The result was 9 - 1 to Huayrapungo. Nothing more was said about the day by the Urcusiqui kids ever again, for some reason??

Recycling Programme

One of the volunteers was heavily into recycling and instigated a 3 bin recycling project in the schools. She encouraged the separation of organics, paper, and other rubbish. This has worked to a certain extent, and we now deliver organic waste to farmers close to the schools, we burn paper, and the other rubbish still gets thrown into rubbish pits as before, but at least we are making the kids aware of the environment a little bit.

General Overview April to September – Chrissie Ellison – Project Manager

Progress was really good with some great positive visible changes to the 3 projects. All 3 schools were repainted both inside and out brightening up their appearance entirely.

During Summer School all volunteers made tremendous progress with the kids that came to school improving their literacy and numeracy skills aswell as enhancing their creative imagination – something they severely lack due to the copy and learn mentality of the local teachers.

We also boosted the nutritional intake for the kids by supplying and cooking food the whole summer and during term tim