Read our second blog from Stephanie who met our latest bunch of volunteers last week.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks preparing for the Summer School, and most of our international volunteers have finally arrived in Ho! Alex, Amelia, Estefania, Joe and Gareth are all students at Leeds Beckett University, and they are joined by Shoshanna, who studies at University of California- Davis in the US. I had a fun couple of days in Accra going to meet everyone.
The latest blog from our Volunteer Coordinator, Kerry.
Summer School
Summer school started on Monday 3 August 2015. I joined the volunteers for the first day to ensure everyone was in the right place. As the volunteers and I had had a week to prepare for summer school, they were keen to get started, so there was a pleasant mix of excitement and anticipation on that first day; the volunteers were more than ready to get stuck in.
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The third blog of the summer from our 2015 Volunteer Coordinator, Kerry.
Off the Tourist Track – Nima Highway Tours
Located just off the Ring Road close to the heart of Accra, you enter into a series of slums and markets. One of these villages is Nima. I admit that I had never heard of the village before and had no idea what to expect when I booked us on to the tour. It turned out to be an eye-opening experience…
Gareth, Faith and I departed from a taxi at Nima Roundabout to find a man waving at us – I hoped that this would be Charles, the tour guide. Charles is local to the town and has lived there all his life. He’s aim is to show tourists, and anyone that is interested, what life is really like, illustrating that people work hard in tough conditions. You can find out more on his Facebook page.
What a year it has been for KickStart Ghana! Another successful summer school combing the best of Ghanaian teachers working alongside UK and Ghanaian volunteers. The ever popular reading club at St Cecilia school helping embed a love for literature amongst young Ghanaians. Dynamo FC has gone from strength to strength and other schools have continued to benefit from sporting equipment.
We also ran our first educational trip with the Essex Army Cadets, pairing up young people from the UK and Ghana to learn about each other and help create a new generation of global citizens.
In the UK we received funding from Total and The Youth Funding Network. We also had an incredible fundraiser, hosted by Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen, which raised over £3,000 and introduced lots of people to some yummy Ghanaian recipes and flavours. We recruited two new trustees and can’t wait to work with them next year.
Finally, we had our softball team continuing to take on the big boys in the charity softball league.
We’d like to thank our fundraisers, supporters, volunteers and partners for making 2014 a wonderful year for the charity. We have plans to make 2015 even bigger and better so watch this space.
Check out some of our favourite photos below for our year in review.
6th March is Ghanaian Independence Day. We wanted to know why people love Ghana so much so we went out and about in Ho to find out. Below are our results.
One of the lessons at the KickStart Ghana summer school focused on aspiration setting. Our volunteers led the children on a creative session where they designed posters and diagrams detailing their thoughts on the future, both personally and from a career perspective. When they had finished they had to present back to the class what they had created and why. We found that the children really engaged well with this task and we were really pleased with the wide range of potential opportunities they had given consideration too.
Please take a look at our Facebook page for more photos from the class.
On Sunday the whole KickStart Ghana Summer School team were invited to meet the community of the church that is connected to the school. We were all really honoured to be invited (even if 7am was a little early…) and were asked to introduce ourselves to the 300 people at the service. The Father also explained how the school and KickStart Ghana had been working over the past few years. Below are a few photos from the day.
Apologies for the delay in the latest blog post, but since I last wrote seven new volunteers have arrived and five of those have left. They’ve been completing a large variety of work. Chris Minch has settled in well to the role of Assistant Volunteer Coordinator. His time has been taken up by airport pickups, inducting volunteers, helping at the summer school and football training and also researching other NGOs in Ho. He is also blogging for KickStart Ghana this summer. Anna Gilthorpe and Rianna Kelly were working at two local Kindergartens assisting the teachers with their work there. Rianna has now taken the lead at the summer school and reading club; planning and executing the lessons with the assistance of Chris Coco and myself. Chris and George Wadsworth coached Dynamo FC and you can read about what they thought of their time in Ho in their blog post. Last, but not least, we had Jeffrey Smith and Adenike Oke from JointSight productions who are working with KickStart Ghana to create a series of videos that showcase our work. I can’t wait to see the finished films!
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We recently ran a photography competition with a meal for two at the fantastic Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen up for grabs (many thanks to Zoe for this kind donation) along with some KickStart Ghana t-shirts as prizes. There were two categories:
1. KickStart Ghana volunteers volunteering. Entries of the photographers best examples of KickStart Ghana volunteer work taking place in Ghana.
2. Ghana. Shots of beautiful Ghana. This could have been the beaches, village life or the wildlife. Photographers were asked to use their imagination.
We received some fantastic entries highlighting the work that we do and the beautiful country of Ghana. The winners and other favourites of the judges can be seen below and the rest on our Facebook page.
Overall winner - Sam Grace. 2012. The daily commute. Locals making their way back from the market to their village.
We invite all KickStart Ghana supporters and former volunteers to enter our photography competition. Win a delicious Ghanaian meal and KickStart Ghana t-shirts!
The photos must fall into either of the following categories:
The judges will be making their decision based on two factors:
Please complete this entry form to submit your photo(s). The closing date for entries will be 31st March.
