What a brilliant way to help Community Action Ghana. This year Shinmyoung Choi ran the Oxford Half Marathon for Community Action Ghana. Up to date her fantastic supporters have raised £555. This goes a huge way towards our work. Thank you!

The money Shin has raised will fund:

• The roofing sheets for a toilet block
• A set of shelves and a table & chairs for a community library
• And five bags of cement to help build the community toilets

The toilets we have built, with communities in Ghana have been described as, “better than a bag of gold”! As well as saving lives they also provide dignity for all who use them. We are also always so delighted to see the libraries we have refurbished and stocked (with the help from Book Aid International) in full use. Pearl, the Library Prefect at Alavanyo Kpeme Library opens the library for her students at 6:30am so they can read their favourite books before school starts, as well as use it to study in after school.

Thank you so much again to Shin and everyone who has sponsored her – you make a difference to people’s lives everyday through your support.

Whist this is not directly related to our charity work our work goes on in the community so what affects the community affects our ability to work with them.

Clemence our project manager has many jobs. As well as working for us and one of these is to to farm to provide food for his family. He grows a variety of crops cassava, maize, sweet peppers to name some. He has sent us these photos of his farm which was flooded by completely unusual floods. As you can see the harvest of maize and sweet peppers have been destroyed but the cassava is probably salvageable.

The worlds attention has been directed at the floods in Pakistan and now Australia but many countries in West Africa have been affected by flooding, with over 730,000 people affected.

With floodwaters washing over ground that is used for open defecation it creates the perfect situation for spreading diseases such as cholera. To help prevent this we need to build more toilets and provide clean water supplies.

A toilet block for a community can cost as little as £14,000 with about half of this being contributed by the community with their labour and locally available materials. A borehole and associated water tower can be as little as £12,000 again with about a third of this being contributed by the communities.

Please think about these ‘forgotten’ communities.

During the flood

After it has receded

While visiting our projects we heard of a fire at a local school –  EP Technical Vocational Institute in Alavanyo Kpeme. 

Thankfully the students were on vacation at the time so no one was hurt. But one of the dormitories was badly affected. Before the boys went on holiday they put all of their possessions into boxes, along with their mattress, and piled them into the dormitory for safe keeping. 

An electrical fault led to the dormitory burning down

Schools are free in Ghana but students must bring their own mattresses, school uniform, books, etc. All of these have been burnt in the fire – only a few bits and pieces are salvagable. 

The boys in this dormitory are second & third years (aged 15-17.) If they cannot replace their belongings they will be unable to return to school and finish their education. 

The school have completed an immediate needs assessment and found that 195 mattresses are needed for the boys. 

Each mattress costs the equivalent of £31.04

The school reached out to us, and other local NGOs to support. So far we have bought & delivered eight mattresses so eight boys now have a bed to sleep on. We would love to be able to replace more mattresses as soon as possible to help the students get back to their studies. 

If you would like to help then please donate today https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/dormitoryfire

Charlotte, a seamstress from Alavanyo ,is hard at work making these beautiful bags for us to sell. As well as generating an income for the charity it provides Charlotte with work, helping her look after her family. Watch this space for our Etsy shop where we will showcase all of the bags and other items we’ll be bringing back in June.

Home Economics teacher, Florence Kumah, is overjoyed with the sewing machines for her class. Jobyco worked their wonders and the drum and the machines arrived safe and secure. Clemence handed them over to Florence at the school with some pupils in attendance. They are now using them in their lessons. Once again thanks to Margaret for donating not only the machines but bobbins, threads and needles. In fact almost everything that the pupils need to get started on their learning curve.
Alyrene, one of the trustees, is visiting the projects later this month and will hopefully get some photos and quotes from the children as to how they are using them.

It all goes to show that items we have that we no longer use can have a whole new life somewhere. If you have some useful but unused items you think might be of use to someone in the Volta region use the contact page to get in touch. Alyrene might be able to take it with her when she goes.

I was telling our friend Kay about how Florence was finding it difficult to teach machine sewing with a single broken sewing machine and she said “I think I know some one who can help.” A couple of weeks later she turns up with four sewing machines from her sister, Margaret. The machines are in excellent working order and came with their instruction books and lots of supplies: threads, spare feet, bobbins etc. etc.

The next problem to solve was how to transport them to Florence’s school. With Clemence Kitsi’s help we found a shipping company in Luton. They could supply a drum and then collect it and deliver it not just to Accra but directly to Alavanyo village. Jobyco efficiently handles all the shipping and paperwork with consummate ease.

So on Friday 25th March 2022 the four sewing machines securely packed into a shipping drum were loaded onto a van to be transported at the start of their journey to Florence Kumah to help her teach Home Economics at Alavanyo Junior Secondary school. I’ll let you know when they arrive.

The cost of the drum was £50 and it will be put to good use when it is emptied, and the cost of transporting it was £90 If you would like to help fund future shipments to the Volta region please click on the donate button.