On February 28th, I officially passed the halfway mark of my time here in Ghana!
I cannot really describe how I feel about accomplishing this feat. At one end, where has four months gone? On the other, I feel like a year has happened within four months. I think the main thing I can say is that perseverance and hard work pays off . Now that I got five months under my belt, I feel another three will be no problem.
The hub is up and running!
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| Current EQWIP HUB Team! |
Finally, after months of preparing and waiting, EQWIP HUB Tamale has now started its first training course for Ghanaian youth! It's a brand new ball game here as my coworkers and I try and begin pioneering what will hopefully be the services that the hub will offer young people. Already there has a been a lot of trial and error, test runs and adjustments to what we hope to offer youth; however, this was even before we began to work with them and thus only a base for improvement.
So when did things start taking off?
As I came into work in mid-January there was literally nothing within the physical space of the hub that had changed. The walls were still the same sunlight yellow, the floors still with thick layers of dust on them and the space empty without a purpose. While it was not for a lack of trying, we, the Canadian volunteers, were blocked from getting work done without budget approvals. There was no rush as well to get/ hire Ghanaian staff in Tamale which made progress stall. This made work life quite frustrating for a person like myself who is driven and motivated by doing work.
On a personal level, I was dealing with several issues. The main one concerned the health of a fellow Canadian. Originally I had two of Canadian volunteers with me; however, an unfortunate case of malaria had occurred to one of them. We (the volunteers, doctors, and EQWIP staff) thought in December that her original case of the illness would be her last as she received what was considered by locals as the right treatment; however, this type of malaria was one which was immune to many sorts of vaccinations and, because the right vaccine was not given to her the first time, she became her very sick again in January. Because Tamale does not have as advanced of facilities as Accra has, the two volunteers were asked to return to Accra to get her further treatment. The sick volunteer , unfortunately, had to leave Ghana for this reason while the other returned a week later for her final few weeks until her contract was up.
For this reason and others, I can easily say January was the toughest month of my trip so far. It is tough to see a friend suffer the way she did, especially not in the comfort of her home. I can only say that taking her to the hospital one evening was the first time I felt homesick/severe and immediate culture shock, not just for me but I felt it for her as well. It is an experience I will never forget and I will never take for granted the great healthcare system we have in Canada after this experience. I am happy to report now though that, upon returning home to Canada, she was able to get the care she needed and she is now malaria-free.
At this point, it became very tough to believe that things were going to change or improve. I was as well the only staff member left in Tamale since the girls were in Accra. It made going to work each day tough and many nights even tougher. Luckily, my boss arrived in late January. With her, she brought the ability to finally start a budget to begin building the hub! With this came new personal hope for change and I began to try and forget the prior months of no work. While we aimed ambitiously for several goals to be met, again, we were dealing with the reality of Ghanaian time.
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| The original hub- This is what it remained from November until February |
The tides begin to turn
The hub first began to change in early February. With a goal to unofficially open the hub to youth at the end of the month (EQWIP globally wants to officially launch all at once) , a lot of pieces of the puzzle had to be put together. First was the floor/design plan.
Below this is a video tour of what our hub currently looks like (since photos can't do it justice) and what the aim of each area is. In short, we have an office, a reception area, a technology/work area and a classroom area. The walls dividing each room have the ability to fold up to make one giant room during larger events. There are still a lot of items/furniture that needs to be added to the hub space; however, as we are dealing with other vendors, we are at the point of just hoping for good luck most times.
As the physical space began to be constructed, the process of preparing for the program needed to begin as well. First was holding a baseline survey. The necessity of a baseline cannot be overemphasized in development work. Baseline studies, commonly done through surveys, allow program designers to know key demographics and potential assumptions that are important for implementing the course. For example, by having our survey done on computers, we were able to observe the computer literacy and knowledge levels of our participants. While it is only a sample of the overall population we plan on targeting, we found computer literacy levels to be quite low for varying reasons. We would not have known this fact (and it is important for our program as we train students at points using laptops) if the baseline had never been conducted. The baseline process took a week and over 90 individuals were interviewed. It was a great success.
From there began the advertising front of our program. We now needed to share with local youth that this program is recruiting and is beginning in the middle of March. With computer literacy levels varying among the youth, there were several different methods we used to recruit. First was word of mouth. By talking with local youth and organizations, we were able to mobilize the message that EQWIP HUBs was looking to open. We began to post posters and advertisements around the city. Since our partner organization works with youth (the National Service Scheme), we tapped into their database to contact youth to apply. Finally, we held a youth open day (our unofficial opening of the hub). We invited youth from across the region to come to our hub to get first-hand information about what our hub looks to do and accomplish. The event was a great success which led to many applications being handed in.
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| Youth Open Day Q&A on Entrepreneurial Track |
The first days of classes
Upon receiving applications, the interview process began to build up the first group of participants. Since this was the first class, we wanted a gender equal class with students varying from all different backgrounds. This would give us a better idea if what we are teaching benefits the students or not for future class qualifications and standards. Some may be overqualified and some may not. It is not to turn away students but instead to understand certain realities, such as if we need to change the curriculum to better suit the students or if we need to focus on having certain types of students for a particular class. Some students own small businesses already. Others have searched for over a year for their first job and have not been able to find one. Some students have a strong grasp of the English language while others do not. By knowing the backgrounds of the students in the class, we have been able to start adapting and understanding the realities of Tamale youth. The group we created for the first class is quite unique for this reason instead of being chosen at random as it will hopefully be going forward.
Our first day of classes began on the 21st of March. It has now been two weeks into our course and things are going well. I share facilitating responsibilities, alongside my Ghanaian colleague Esmond, and we have split the days of which we teach to allow us to make proper preparations. I began to practice speaking slower for the classroom setting a month prior as there are many non-native English speakers in the class. My first class alone was last Thursday which ended up going quite successful . In the first weeks, there have already been a few key lessons we have learned including the following two:
1. The need for simplistic language- While we had Ghanaians assist the American curriculum developers in making our teaching material, the first weeks showed us the differences between Ghanaian and North American English that we could not catch in planning. What we did not know as well was how these differences could affect certain course activities. We conducted an origami activity one afternoon where participants were divided into four groups to make a paper bird. The first group listened to a staff member read instructions on how to make the bird, the second was shown how to make a bird by a staff member step by step, the third was given visual and written instructions to them and the fourth were given the already made bird and told to figure it out with no instruction. Which way would you find easiest to learn to make the bird? In the test trial, it was those who were given paper instructions to read and see made the best birds; however, in the classroom, they did the worst. Students complained they did not understand the words in the instruction thus making it difficult to complete. It is hard to tell what information Ghanaian youth do/do not understand prior to teaching; however, now that we are learning that the vocabulary of the book is too difficult, the curriculum will need changes.
2. How to change students from working on Ghanaian time- In our first session, we predicted that there would be many students late due to the naturalness of Ghanaian time; however, since we have a lot to cover in the course and since many participants cannot get off work earlier to compensate for Ghanaian time, it has been a challenge to figure out how we would get people here on time. If I were back in Canada, I would do a "punishment" system where students would have to do a silly/embarrassing task to compensate for their lateness; however, in Ghana, people have such strong pride for themselves that even making them do loud animal noises in public makes them embarrassed and at points feel disrespected. We do not aim to punish by kicking students out of the program; however, we as well need a way to get students to come to class and not allow them to come as they please. As a result, we have tried doing little punishment games but starting at the lowest and considerably less embarrassing level that we could. Each week we try to increase the level of the punishment a little bit as a means for students to come to class on time and it seems to be working.
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| First day of teaching
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As the classes continue, I look forward to sharing more about what I have learned from the students and how the hub is progressing. Most of January/February I have not traveled outside of Tamale due to my need most times to remain. March though has been a different month. In my next post, I hope to share a bit about my recent adventure, including my first safari!
