Volunteer with Children
Women's Empowerment

Hear from a volunteer: Declan’s 3 months in Ghana

Posted: April 30, 2020

Well this is my second week of being here in Ghana and it’s been fantastic so far! I’ve been more productive this week as I have been getting used to everything. I’ve been working on two GVI programs this week.

I’ve been working alongside Sam – GVI’s Project Coordinator – and my fellow volunteers on the women’s economic empowerment courses, run at GVI base for women from the community, which have been going really well. We’ve had quite a few local women come to the courses this week and it’s been so much fun and so rewarding. I’ve mainly been helping them work through GVI’s Basic Computing Certificate, demonstrating how to work Microsoft Office Suite such as Word and Excel and occasionally I’ve been assisting some of them with English Language lessons.

Women from the community enjoying some cake after class

I’ve also been working on GVI’s Early-years Education program. The volunteers and I went to Divine Home, which is one of the schools that Matt – GVI’s Program Manager – introduced us to last week, and so I got to spend more time with the teachers and the students there. Towards the end of the school day, the teachers let us sit with the students and give them an ICT lesson. They all appeared to enjoy it, they were very keen to ask and answer questions and to come up and use the computers as well. It was a really enjoyable day, and I can’t wait to be back at the school.

At the beginning of the week, one of the school teachers from Divine Home came to the base for a partners meeting. We sat with him and learned all about the school, their needs, and how best we could help and benefit the students. This is a regular process for GVI, to ensure we correctly understand the needs of the community and that the community can help drive their own change. Some of the suggestions included assisting the teachers in the classroom, starting after school clubs for the boys and girls, and all of us doing extra-curricular activities with the children. We will now plan out these activities with the GVI staff.

It was such as good weekend as well. The other volunteers and I went to the beach which was beautiful and really relaxing. Saturday evening we went to the beach bar, Big Millie’s, and there was a local festival on. There was an acrobatic show, which was amazing to see, especially live. Afterwards, there were live bands playing music and all the locals there were dancing and just having a good time, so, of course, I joined in with them. Great times!