Archive for the Development Category

Cycle One: Fifth week in Adaklu District – 10th-17th August

After our first awareness raising event on Sunday 9^th August the Project Coordinator gave the team the morning off as many of the team members were exhausted after the day’s event. In the afternoon, however, work on the project had to continue, so the volunteers met with their local farming groups for business as usual! Also, the Maize group went to meet a newly formed group of Maize farmers who had shown interest in working together at our awareness event on the importance of group formation. In the evening we had an Active Citizen Day presentation which three of our fellow volunteers hosted for the group; they focused on humanitarian aid, and in their presentation they had the team partake in a case study where we were split into three groups. One group took the role of the UN, and the other two groups had to devise a plea on behalf of Haiti and Syria, for the necessary resources.

Throughout the week the entire team was busy preparing for the project’s Mid-Placement Review at the beginning of the following week. Photos, videos, and music were put together to summarize the past four weeks of fun but also hard work. We didn’t waste more time on resting, however, and it was on Tuesday – just a day after our first awareness event – that we started planning and preparing for our upcoming sexual health seminar for the youth and women of Waya, in order to prevent the spread of STD’s and to help raise awareness of the facilities the local clinic has, and also to help reduce teenage pregnancies. We plan to run this session in our spare time, as an extra project outside of our main aims (improving the livelihood conditions of the people of Waya). During the afternoon, we experienced a huge rain storm where the UK volunteers had a lot of fun running around in the rain, whilst the ICV’s looked on confused… Later in the evening we had our weekly social – this time it was a picnic where everyone got to try each other’s host parents cooking. There were also counterpart related games, to help improve the relationship between counterparts, and also have a bit of fun at the same time.

Later in the week, getting ready for the Mid-Placement Review was progressing at full speed with all of us working on both our team and individual presentations. As research for the sexual health seminar, one group had to go to Waya in the morning to find out what sort of facilities the clinic has in terms of family planning – unfortunately, our main means of transportation was broken, so the volunteers walked the distance. The possible highlight of the week was a bite of Bulgarian feta cheese for every volunteer during this week’s My Culture Day presentation, greeted with a mixed response from UK and ICVs!

It was on Friday when a group of the volunteers went back to Waya to meet up with a number of local maize farmers who were keen to create and register another group in the community. After a detailed introduction to Lattitude ICS’s project in Adaklu Waya as well as agreeing on working towards the same objectives, both the volunteers and the farmers seemed filled in with a lot of positivity towards all the hard work that was waiting for them. We counted the day as a huge success as it expanded our project with one more group of farmers to add to our family, but also created even more local friends for the current and future volunteers. Taking this into account, it only made sense for us to close the day with a Nyanukemenya (or ‘Know What I Know’) session on choir singing. It was incredibly inspiring and unbelievably touching to see all volunteers on the project – a number of about 28 of us here – pouring their souls out in singing ‘Lean on Me’ by Bill Withers, even if not completely in tune…

The weekend was highlighted by, of course, more preparations for the upcoming week but also by our Open Mic session where everyone was involved singing and dancing. One of the volunteers was also celebrating her birthday, so we tried to make the evening extra special for her, with her counterpart among others performing a dance for her blending into the happy birthday tune sung in two different languages simultaneously – the magic of cross-cultural interaction. We left Anfoe on Sunday and arrived in Ho just around 40 minutes later. The rest of the evening was left for us to enjoy each other’s company in the pool of the hotel we were staying in with Adaklu Mountain and entire Ho city at the background. Everyone made sure to enjoy the view, the pool, the food, and the free time we had, knowing that the real work was just about to begin.

Cycle One: Third week in Adaklu District – 27th July–2nd August

This week has been a hectic one, as we analyse and conclude the results of our community survey from the weekend and we begin to plan our very first Awareness Day. Monday begins with a trip to Mafi and Ho to see how their markets operate in comparison with the local market in Waya that we visited. Everyone is really excited to see another part of Ghana, and despite an early morning, spirits are high. That is until, shock horror, the bus blows a tyre on the dusty roads just outside of Waya. The wait to get it fixed, means an excuse for a few selfies as a team and then we are back on the road.

We arrive at a VERY busy Mafi market, a vast contrast to Waya, with stalls, cars and people everywhere, selling everything from groundnuts to maize to jewellery to pastries. Lots of volunteers get very excited by all the fruit on offer and stock up – we like to make sure we get our 5 a day! But our objectives always come first and before buying ourselves anything, we spend our time observing and interacting with the traders, finding out how easy it is to obtain a stall, the prices they sell at and how good business is. We find out a lot of interesting information and it will be good to use in our future training surrounding marketing and branding.

Afterwards we head to Ho, where we spend some more time with the traders – there are more clothes stalls available in Ho and a lot of our team pick up authentic clothing, getting away from the dark colours most of the UK volunteers are used to. With our heads full of new knowledge from the markets and stomachs full of the delights the market had to offer, we head back to Anfoe for dinner and our first volunteer-led Active Citizen Day presentation.

The group have chosen Nuclear Weapons as a topic and they deliver information on the ‘for’ and ‘against’ side for nuclear disarmament before getting the whole group to join the debate. The group is very split on the topic and it makes for a good discussion, with everyone giving their opinion and making interesting arguments from the cost of having the weapons to the potential problems countries may face if they are unarmed. I believe we could have a few activists in our group!

Tuesday starts with the exciting news that the pig some of our volunteers purchased has arrived! Although, the plan to call the pig Herbert, is ruined with the news the pig is actually a girl! We’ve had lots of other suggestions from Babe to Jolene to just keeping Herbert; finally we decide on Roxie, who seems very happy in her specially built pig pen and all the food the volunteers are bringing her. Once the excitement dies down, it’s time for work and all of the groups meet at the Blue House to set their agendas for the week. The monitoring and evaluation team are analysing the results of the survey, safety and security are filling in risk assessments, planning and logistics are coming up with ideas for our first Awareness Event and the media team are posting last week’s blog and coming up with the new idea of ‘a day in the life of’ where they will film the farmers to demonstrate what their daily life is like. We end the day with an all Team Meeting, where star counterparts of the week are awarded and everyone updates on their work.

Our first Awareness Day is the topic of Wednesday, with the planning team explaining their idea to the team for feedback and any other ideas. They’ve come up with a Family Fun Day, complete with fun activities for the children, such as a sack race and apple bobbing, and a football match, but with the main focus being on group formation and registration, including stalls on record keeping, creating a bank account and the benefits of registration. We are hoping to also have the District Assembly and the Bank present to talk to the community. It sounds like a fun day for all involved and we hope it will be a big success.

Wednesday night is social night and it’s four of our volunteers turn to host us – they start the night with a fun game where everyone must pick a dare from the hat – meaning we have some brilliant impressions of pigs, descriptions of volunteer’s perfect partners and some singing! Then it’s film time and we are given orange slices and toffees as snacks – it’s better than an actual cinema!

Our Thursday is a very busy one, with back to back meetings and events happening. We start with an all team meeting to organise what needs to happen around the Awareness Day within each individual teams and come up with questions to ask when we have our bank meeting in the afternoon. Luckily our day is broken up with the local children performing traditional displays of dancing and music, portraying their Voltarian culture. It’s all really exciting and colourful and some of our volunteers are pulled up to dance with the children – much to their embarrassment!

From there, it was back to work, to have a meeting with GN Bank, who gave us lots of information about creating group bank accounts and who very kindly agreed to help us at our Awareness Day next Sunday. The man from the bank was so passionate about his work, we think he managed to convince some of us to create accounts with them! Afterwards, our planning team headed to Waya to visit the football pitch and speak to the Chief and Elders for their approval of our event. Thankfully, they agreed and the space at the pitch will really work to show off everything we want to do.

Our night ended with ‘my culture day’ where four of our volunteers taught us about their culture in the Volta region of Ghana, including details about traditional dress, dancing and festivals. We all learnt a lot and are hoping we will get to experience one of the festivals during our time here.

We started Friday with a general meeting to write up our experiences at the Mafi and Ho markets and what we learnt from the bank. The media and planning team meet to discuss how to promote our Awareness Event and are getting ready to create lots of colourful posters and flyers to catch the community’s attention. We will also be doing announcements in the local church services on Sunday and continue to do announcements on the big speakers across Waya.

Lots of our groups met with their individual farmer groups during the day too, and every group has managed to elect an executive team and are starting on constitutions – it’s all going really well and we’re very proud of the progress everyone is making.

Friday night is our ‘Know What I Know’ night and two of our volunteers, who turn out to be counterparts who’ve read the same book, teach us about how to be an effective person and move from a state of dependency to independence to interdependency. It’s really interesting and everyone is impressed – putting a lot of pressure on next week’s group!

Although it’s a Saturday and technically the weekend, there is no rest for the wicked as our teams meet early morning to prepare for next week and finish the results from the survey, which is looking really interesting and will give us lots to work on. We then spend the afternoon making football nets from water sachets, a little project we’ve created on the side as most of the goal posts in the community don’t include nets. It’s recycling at its finest! Once the sun had gone down, half of our team went to play football to prepare for next Sunday’s Awareness Day match against Waya football team. Our proud team leader managed to score a goal but the celebrations didn’t last for long, as she scored an own goal shortly after! Oh well, you win some, you lose some! She’s insisting that technically, she scored two goals and therefore, should be even more proud of herself. The other half of our team did a short exercise class of cardio, yoga and stretching, which causes some sore muscles the next day.

The evening was open mic and we all came together to tell jokes, riddles and finish with a boys vs girls sing off – to which we still don’t know the winner of, with the boys insisting they were better and the girls determined they had nailed it. Either way, Roxie the pig, who was present, seemed to enjoy it all.

Sunday morning we all headed to the churches across Anfoe and Waya to spread the news of our Awareness Day and invite all of the community along. We also stayed for the full services and fully enjoyed the singing and sermons. Once back home, it was counterpart day and most spent their time washing and catching up on odd jobs before spending the night relaxing before it starts all over again in the morning! We know it’s going to be a busy one preparing for our first Awareness Event and making sure everyone has lots of family fun (while forming and registering groups, of course)!

Cycle One: Second week in Adaklu District – 20th-26th July

It’s Sunday and the end of Week Two in Adaklu Waya! Project Livelihoods has kicked off with various group meetings amongst the following teams: Media, Monitoring and Evaluation, Planning and Logistics and Safety and Security. The Monitoring and Evaluation have had a particularly busy week, writing up the questionnaire for a survey which we carried out on Saturday with the aim of gathering data on the residents of Waya and the challenges they face in their livelihoods. We managed to exceed our target of 300 participants in a single day, which was a huge success! This can largely be put down to successful organisation, the team being split between the 4 quarters of Waya and then 2 groups each with one Ewe, one English and one Twi speaker.

We also had our first meeting with the District Assembly, where we outlined some of the key issues and took the first step in making them aware of the challenges faced in the community. We also got more information on the benefits of registration, which included reduced price of tractors for farmers and free training. Throughout the week, other groups have met with members of the Anfoe Youth Network, having split into Maize, Cassava, Pastries, Kente and Groundnut farmers. The Maize group held their first elections for representatives, and there is a promising sense of enthusiasm for all the groups– it was inspirational to see how eager to be involved with our program they seemed. It’s great to feel we are all moving in the right direction to make a difference!

The meetings have seen some great progress – time-keeping has been addressed (it turns out ‘African Time’ is actually a thing) and the next step for many of us is establishing a constitution and setting up savings accounts for the groups. Any misconceptions about the objectives of ICS have been allayed, with the concept of sustainability, self-sufficiency and ‘teach a man to fish’ being emphasised. A second meeting was also held with the WWGG (Waya Women’s Groundnut Group), with an outstanding turnout of 74 attendees, a number which will necessitate dividing up the group according to farming occupation at our next meeting. Within the team itself, we had our first one-on-ones with our Team Leaders to discuss progress and suggest improvements for the coming weeks. It’s good to feel that everything is being done to make the project successful.

Though working hard is rewarding, it’s always great to let your hair down within our down time. We have been getting up to all sorts of fun!!! It always makes it interesting when you have to find a game that will entertain a large group of volunteers, especially when the power is out. “I know what sounds like fun, let’s play an extremely active game in the pitch dark.” Lit only by torchlight and the odd mobile phone we somehow managed to play within the Safety and Security team’s rules. We played a game called ‘Down by the River’ and another which involved identifying each other based on a written list of likes and dislikes.

Friday night was awesome!! Our team leaders hosted a “Know What We Know” meeting. It started off with the usual group circle in the life-draining room we have all are meetings in. Though it soon got interesting when the drums came out, all eyes were drawn to the whiteboard with the lyrics of a Ghanian song printed in red marker. As confused eyes scrawled over the words, our team leaders explained the meaning behind the song and gave us a small tutorial. Soon after we all broke out into song as lungs cried out with joy over the song that simply mimics the sound of Kente weavers:

Kro Kro Kroi Kro
Kroi Kroi Kro Kro Kro
Kroi Kro naye medo naye medo naye medo

The mozzies are still biting, but it adds to the experience I suppose! A great memory we will cherish is the time a couple of us lay on the grass looking up at the night sky. We had a great laugh as we searched for shooting stars. One of our fondest times though was when a somewhat hard-faced mate of ours jumped out of his skin after picking up a brick infested with creepy crawlies (what a baby!) He carried on building though, as long as the rest passed him the bricks. We eventually found some eager local kids to help us construct the pen for our pet pig Herbert who is arriving next week (so excited!). It was so fun, it reminded one of our fellow volunteers of home where he works in construction – though sunburn was the price we all had to pay. A lot has happened this week, most of which is exciting, new and has created memories that will last a lifetime.

Cycle One: First week in Adaklu District – 14th-19th July

It’s the end of our first week here in Adaklu District. But, as with all good stories, we should start at the beginning. And I’m going to classify the beginning as our journey from the guest house in Accra to our new host community. So here goes…

We had our first experience of GMT – ‘Ghana Man Time’ – in waiting for our bus to arrive to take us from the Suma Court hotel to Adaklu district. We expected the bus at 9am, but it eventually turned up at around 11am! This might be something the team has to get used to! Not only was the bus late, but we had a few problems with the vehicle on the way. We were happily trundling along down a dusty and rocky road, just as we were coming into Ho, when we heard a loud BANG as the bus’ rear left tire popped. We all hopped off while the bus driver changed the tire, and then we were on our way again.

We finally got to Anfoe at 6pm, and went straight to the Chief’s Palace. In ‘typical African style’, we experienced a long traditional welcome; some of the youth of the village did some singing and dancing, and there were welcome addresses. Chief (Torgui Agbobade IV) also assured the management of Lattitude the safety of the volunteers within the Anfoe community. This warm welcome made the whole team feel a lot better after a long day of travelling!

After the ceremony, the team met at the house of the President and First Lady (also known as the two Team Leaders, Sammy and Taz). We all ate our first meal, before the host parents came to meet their new children and took them home. Everyone spent their first night in their new host homes.

The next day, the team travelled to Waya to pay a visit to the Chief of Waya (Torgui Lablublu V) and the elders. We had another fantastic welcome from the community: some students from the Waya Junior High School performed a cultural display, which the volunteers really enjoyed. Some even got so carried away that they got up and joined in some of the dancing! The Chief of Waya gave a welcome address, before the Queen Mother presented each of the volunteers with an acceptance bead to wear which shows we are part of the community. Anyone that sees the bead knows that we have been noticed by the Chief and elders. It’s an important bead! (Author’s note: unfortunately I managed to trail the end of my bracelet through my Groundnut soup so I had to trim it….) The Lattitude volunteers then performed a song that they had written (‘Shout out to Lattitude ICS’*) to show thanks to the Chief and elders. We all agreed that we wouldn’t experience such a welcome as we had received in the two communities anywhere else in the world.

Our plan at the end of the week was to meet the Anfoe youth network to discuss our questions and create a timetable with them, but as there were some preparations being carried out for a funeral they felt that they were unable to get a good attendance at the meeting and it was postponed until Sunday. The team was initially frustrated by this as everyone really wanted to start working. However, luckily for us there was an alternative event that we could attend. The Chief of Waya, during his welcome address, had invited us to watch a Schools cultural competition. We stayed there for the whole morning, watching the students doing poetry recitals, traditional dances and singing in choirs. We returned to Anfoe in time for lunch, and had a break in the afternoon before meeting when it was cooler to play some football with the local youth. Lattitude managed to score one goal (well done Delali), but the other team definitely managed to score a lot more. And that is the point of football. So that means technically we lost. But we have 9 more weeks to settle the score… Challenge yourself to score a goal!

During the weekend, the team enjoyed some time off from work – most people used the time to catch up with washing their clothes and other domestic duties, as well as celebrating some volunteer birthdays (Essinam and Taz) and playing sports! On Sunday we had our initial meeting with our Team Level partner, the Anfoe Youth Network. We met them in their various groups and heard from them the problems they face as farmers and some of the challenges that affect their economic activities. This meeting will help the team as they prepare their Community Survey on Livelihood Conditions in the coming days!

The week has gone so fast. Now that we have begun to meet the community the team is starting to feel really positive about the work we can do and the impact we can have within the 10 week programme. Being the first cycle, it’s up to us to lay the foundations for future ones!

*Shout out to Lattitude ICS

Shout out to Lattitude ICS

Woezor lo - Ayo

Shaping the youth to make a difference

Changing our lives, changing the world

We are together to give the best

Woezor lo - Ayo

What Makes Vanuatu Special - Ruby Allen

Recently returned Lattitude volunteer Ruby Allen from Pentecost, Vanuatu told us exactly what makes Vanuatu such a special place:

A yellow fishing boat bounces merrily through the glimmering turquoise water, nearly tipping myself, my volunteering partner and her copious luggage into that beautiful, shark infested Pacific Ocean stretching along the Coast of Pentecost Island, Vanuatu. The tiny speck of land, only a dot on the map rises impressively out of the waves into a cloud of mist. The exotic jungle on top of it will be my home. The people on the boat with me will be my family.

My name is Ruby Allen I’m 19 years old and live in Bristol. In May of 2013 I made the decision to apply for a placement teaching and working in communities after spending hours and hours on the internet looking at the endless lagoons, amazing culture and simple contrasting lifestyle the South Pacific offers (it also makes pretty happy procrastination for a stressed A-level student). After looking into it a bit more thoroughly I decided to apply with a non-for profit organisation called Lattitude Global Volunteering, they’re one of the only charities offering gap year placements in Vanuatu (as well as plenty of other remote places). I’ve always had an itch to explore untouched and unknown places of the world. Teaching and living within a community (which stretched as far as sharing a room with my younger host sisters) seemed like such a rare, and rewarding chance to do this.

In December I was sent the news that I would be placed in the North of Pentecost, one of the most non-western and traditional parts of the country. This would be my home for the next 5 months and there I would teach, live, laugh, work in the gardens, go on endless jungle treks and cry over bleeding sores and infections. I was based at a small, francophone school (120 students – though more like 80 actually attended) named Abuanga Primary School. I was there to teach English (as a fourth language) as well as Arts and Crafts, Drama and Music. Overall, though incredible difficult and at times testing, the teaching was very rewarding. One moment I’ll never forget – my top student in class 6 Keitsy, wrote me a note as follows ‘I love Miss Ruby, she is the best on the island and in the world and I like her because she is very kind and she is from England’. This might not seem impressive for an 11 year old…. But when they are writing in their fourth language and have only been learning English for a year and have Bislama (the native tongue) to confuse their English, I thought it was simply incredible. I felt and still feel very proud to be a part of those childrens’ education and lives.

As well as exploring and being known by the entire north of the island. We also took our half term break in beautiful Espirito Santo and spent 5 days in Erakor Village on the island of Efate, a 20 minute drive out of Port Vila before heading to our outer island placements. After my placement had finished, my volunteering partner and another volunteer from the UK Joe Wilde took the opportunity to go and hike up an active volcano in the darkness and watch the sunrise on beautiful Mt Yasur in Tanna before heading into our travels in Australia.

We cried every month but laughed every day. I am yet to visit many countries, continents even – but somehow I feel confident in my explanation of Vanuatu as a country ‘unlike any other’. I accustomed very quickly to this hard, simple, joyous lifestyle, almost ‘too’ quickly. I have two homes now; two families and two very different ways of life. This journey – these people, everything about this trip has inspired me. In ways I find hard to put to paper, I was given a new lease of life, immense, simple happiness and utter peace. It goes without saying, this journey was challenging and Vanuatu – well Pentecost - is not for the faint hearted. Yet my arrival back to the UK brings an utterly new appreciation for that bizarre voyage. There’s something about the Pacific, perhaps, the salt in the sea, the breeze in the bush or the copious amounts of taro you’re forced to eat – it’s magic, it sticks and I will certainly never, ever forget it.

Lattitude ICS Project Sangilo, Malawi Explained

Interested in volunteering with Lattitude ICS in Malawi, but would like to know a bit more about the project you’d be involved in? Team Leader Becky Bush provides a brilliant summary of the project thus far:

You will be working within a community that consists mainly of subsistence farmers, most of whom live on less than $1 a day. The village of Sangilo and its surrounding depend on cassava and maize production as well as fishing in the lake, which has consistently yielded decreasing fish harvests.

Despite the poverty, culturally the communities are very committed to education, realising that it is a gateway to development at the family level and have demonstrated this commitment through their allocation of their own small resources in establishing and supporting education facilities in the local area. Such structures tend to be inadequate in size to house their need and are of local materials which provide insufficient durability and shelter for the children.

All projects are supported and encouraged by the traditional structure (chieftancy) and local development groups within the village with educational projects given priority.

Although some children enter primary school after having attended nursery, pass rates of standard 1 are very low, around 50%. The community hopes to increase this with better understanding of the basics.

Our primary aim is to prepare pupils for entry into the national educational system at the primary school levels by improving facilities and programming at the nursery level. This project is primarily education focused and is mainly focused on nursery education but with secondary projects along the way.

Play Soccer Army invade Cape Coast

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Third week into placement and things were really getting exciting…the Street Walk was the first of our events we had organised and it was a key method in raising awareness of the re- launch of the Street League programme- one of the main programmes at the centre that target unemployed youths. We had decided on a street walk as it would grab people’s attention and with the aid of leaflets, put across our information immediately.

Around 9am on Saturday after our 2 hour core soccer programme we gathered the kids in a massive rally. This wasn’t a considerably hard task as the kids tend to follow us everywhere! We were amazed at how engaged and energized the kids were about going on the walk. We had been scared initially as the UK volunteers had ever organised an event quite like this and we had a severe lack of drums and whistles- there was no need to worry, the kids made it! From start to finish they bellowed out different chants and songs, accompanied with make shift drums and instruments.

Armed with a 70 child army, 2 banners, whistles and various instruments and led by our very own Abraham , we owned the streets of Cape Coast for over an hour- stopping traffic, chatting to locals and sticking leaflets anywhere that would hold it. The atmosphere was electric and unlike anything we had experienced before. Through fountains of sachet water children could be seen dancing and singing like their lives depended on it! It really hit us how surreal the experience was when one of the centre staff, Coach Ali, was running up and down a busy road hailing at oncoming traffic and throwing leaflets in taxi windows…unreal!

This walk demonstrated how different things are here, it would be hard to get the kids parents to agree to their children participating, never mind local councils letting us take over the roads! The culture here is so relaxed and allowed us to have a great event and really spread the word about the programmes at the centre. One of the best days here easily!

- Thenneh and Johnny UK Volunteers

Meeting our host familys- by Lysette Hacking UK volunteer

We’re on our last day of in country orientation today and all i can think about is my host family. There’s so many questions flying round in my head; who are my host family? will they like me? is there children in the family? I just can wait to meet them and find out. We were on our last lecture before dinner and all i could think about was the host family, its effecting my concentration. After the lecture our project coordinator asked if she could have a word with me and my counterpart Cat, She took us to the Lecturer, Elvis and told us that he would be our host father. I can’t begin in tell you how much this put my mind at ease, to know that our host father was actively involved in the project so he knew the in’s and outs of hosting volunteers.

So the time had come we were on our way to Cape coast, i cant wait now, 2 hours and i would be there!

We arrived at the center, i just couldn’t believe how wrong my preconceptions were, this place is amazing! There’s a solar lit astro-turf, a fully furbished computer suite, a library its unbelievable! Now all thats left to do is actually see our host home and the rest of the family.

Our host father arrived to pick us up from the centre about 7pm, the suspense was killing me I just wanted to get there. On the way we drove through a school, our host father explained that this is the oldest school in Ghana and that it would be the shortest route to work for us. After about 10 minutes drive we turned down a dirt track, we were nearly there! As we arrived at the house I couldn’t believe my eyes it was massive and it was purple my favorite colour, we walked through the door and where greeted by 3 children and our host mother Catherine. The children were very shy and just hid round a corner butthe Catherine ensured we had a warm welcome. Elvis then showed us to our room to get settled. I couldn’t believe my luck with the room we had wardrobes, plug socket and an ensuite with shower it’s better than my room in England!

All that was left to do now was to get acquainted with the family, I was sure I was going tolike it here.

Up and Coming Africa

As our returned volunteers from the likes of Malawi, South Africa and Ghana will know, many African countries are far from the skewered portrayal they too often receive as archetypes of impoverishment, disease, conflict and corruption.

You visit a country like Ghana or Botswana as I and many Lattitude volunteers have done and you find a vibrant and exciting culture, a happy people and increasingly visions of wealth, prosperity and success.

Africa is a continent of over 1 billion people and 54 countries. It has some of the greatest supply of the most valuable natural resources in the world and has some of the most varied and dramatic natural beauty and biodiversity. Looking to the future, many African countries look to be the generators of global economic growth with their high proportion of young people and consistent growth rates of 7-8%.

African’s, for the first time, are excited about their future prospects and this is being translated into a burgeoning confidence of self-expression through all manner of means, both on the continent and within it’s diasporas across the world, including hubs of African culture in cosmopolitan societies like the UK. When this is compared to the grimmer outlook of the rest of the world, this African vibrancy and cultural confidence is becoming increasingly alluring.

None are more so emblematic of this trend than the British-Ghanaian Afro-Beat artist Fuse ODG, who with hits such as Antenna and Azonto has been bringing Ghanaian music and dance to the forefront of popularity in the UK. It is no secret that African culture has often punched above its political and economic weight in the past, namely through the success of African-American artists in the US and UK who have systematically been the instigators of sequential popular music trends the world over; from blues to funk, disco, hip hop and rap. Furthermore artists such as Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon have been instrumental in exposing the world to more traditional African music. However, unlike in the past, this latest expression of African culture by artists like Fuse ODG comes directly from Africa and importantly is being identified with particular countries such as Ghana.

As Fuse ODG is keen to make a point of through his campaign ‘TINA’ (This Is New Africa) and in his recent interview on Newsnight - Africa is changing, it is different and it represents a positive and aspirational outlook, which in much a reverse to the past, the rest of the world is increasingly looking to.

Now more than ever it is an amazing time to volunteer in countries such as Ghana and Malawi and it is important to realise that as a volunteer you will not only be helping within the community you will be based in, you will also be gaining a lot from the experience – being exposed to an exciting cultural environment, which will be playing an ever more important part in what the world of the future will look like.

Reflections from Accra, Ghana

As the UK team leader for one of the first Lattitude ICS projects, I’m so excited to be writing from Accra, Ghana, at the beginning of what I’m sure is going to be an amazing journey – for myself, the other volunteers and for the communities in which we’ll be working. Having completed our pre-placement training in the UK, we are now on our in-country training, and it has been great to finally meet our Ghanaian counterparts and for our teams to feel complete!

A central aspect of our orientation period has been intercultural exchange, and we’ve had lots of discussions about cross-cultural working and the challenges and opportunities of living and working with people from different cultural backgrounds. It’s been really useful to learn more about the do’s and don’ts of Ghanaian cultural etiquette. For every new thing I have learned about the ways in which Ghanaian and British people do things differently, I have learned another that has shown me how much we have in common. One of the best parts of my experience so far has been spending time with the Ghanaian members of our team and finding that all the positive things that my friends and family members who have been to Ghana before have said to be true: the warmth and friendliness came through straight away in the gloriously warm welcome we received from our Ghanaian friends when we arrived. I’m really looking forward to working together as a mixed group, and to discovering all the different skills that we as individuals will be able to contribute to the team.

As for what lies ahead, I’m looking forward to getting to grips with our project, Football for Hope, a programme which aims to improve the livelihood prospects of young people in Cape Coast, an area which has very high levels of youth unemployment. The centre works to provide programmes which help young people gain life and work skills to assist them in gaining access to further education or entering employment. But before that, our next milestone will be meeting our host families where we will be living for the next few months, and of course, getting used to the tropical heat!

Klara, UK ICS Lattitude Team Leader

I’m the Ghanaian team leader for the ICS Lattitude Football for Hope programme and I was born and raised in Accra. I was very excited when I was picked to be part of the ICS programme because I read about the programme and I felt it was something worth sacrificing my time for. I was also happy to be a part of it because I love issues to do with youth development and helping the needy. This raised my expectations and my impatience to start working on the project. Finally the day arrived.

The Ghanaian and British volunteers arrived in Accra on the same day for the in-country orientation. On the first day we had a welcome and introductory presentation from both the Ghanaian and UK volunteers. We also had a city tour of Accra and a whole package of orientation sessions. We have now fully completed our orientation. It has been amazing, fun and full of teaching, practical sessions, cultural understanding and advice. It has been a good learning experience to have before the actual project. Right now I just can’t wait to start working… I am charged!

Derick, Ghanaian ICS Lattitude Team Leader

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