International Service Learning Alliance has officially opened their Ghana Program with Project OKURASE.

Project OKURASE offers several ways to give, including volunteering your time to go to the village of Okurase in Ghana and help in many ways. We are excited to announce that the International Service Learning Alliance (ISLA) is now making this process easier and more efficient. Those interested in doing so can apply with ISLA to volunteer or to complete an internship with Project OKURASE.

As ISLA appropriately notes, “Because our earth is an island that we must learn to live on, in peace. Because together we are stronger and better.”

Project OKURASE to be Featured at Whole Child/Whole Planet Expo

Falling on the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the Whole Children, Whole Planet Expo will take place on April 24, 2010 at Highland Hall Waldorf School in Northridge, California from 9:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Project OKURASE will be featured as we teach some of the skills we will be teaching in Okurase such as textile design and drumming. We will sell our product at the expo, which generally hosts 3500 people with a celebrity presence. The chair of the advisory board is Ed Begley, Jr. The Expo is run by Kathy Arnos. See what Kathy has to say in her recent blog.

In early 2005, Arnos created and began producing the Whole Children, Whole Planet Expo, a premier natural parenting and family expo that introduces attendees of all ages to the benefits of natural products, organics foods, natural medicine, enrichment learning programs, sustainable living practices and important health and environmental issues. The first WCWP Expo was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center over Earth Day weekend in 2006.

Currently, Arnos also produces and hosts an internet-radio show – Eco Family News on “I Am Healthy Radio” – as she continues to write freelance for several on-line and in-print publications. She also sits on the Advisory Board’s for California Safe Schools, Holistic Pediatric Association, bluedominoes.com, and the San Fernando Valley Green Team. Arnos leads the K-12 Environmental Educational Task Force for the Team, and has been named the Environmental Special Projects Coordinator for Northridge East Neighborhood Council.

Submit your Vote for Solar Sisters!

The Barefoot College in India is one of the 12 finalists for the BBC World Challenge. Bunker Roy, the founder has written to us and asked us to vote for Solar Sisters. We ask that you forward the link on to your friends and family and vote yourself for this amazing project.

The link is
www.theworldchallenge.co.uk/index.php

The Barefoot College in India is teaching women who are illiterate to become solar engineers. They are making solar lanps, solar panels, solar cooking stoves, etc.  They have graciously extended their training to women from Africa. It is truly phenomenal that they can teach women from different cultures who speak different languages by doing non verbal instruction. We have started talking with Bunker Roy, the founder about how Project OKURASE in Ghana can somehow link with the Barefoot College in India as we are headstrong to move solar energy forward in Ghana. Bunker is very approachable. We are making an MST (Multisystemic Therapy)  trip to India later this month and will be meeting up with Bunker and visiting Barefoot College. Who knows where it will go. Please keep us in your thoughts.

We will be starting a fruit drying cooperative of women from Okurase and Tamale (in Northern Ghana) probably in December. It would be great if we could use solar energy in this venture!

-Cindy

Stitch Joins the Family

We welcome to the Project OKURASE family Tricia Waddell, the editor of Stitch Magazine. The kids of Djole are already referring to her as “our editor”.  Stitch will publish a story on Project OKURASE’s sewing centre, called Rhion’s Sewing Centre, and it is due to come out in April. Stitch is a beautiful magazine with articles on step-by-step procedures to make clothing and accessories. The publication has an international readership of 80,000. As someone who doesn’t sew but who had a grandmother who sewed my whole life, I am quite taken with this magazine and recommend that you view a copy. Tricia visited us in Charleston this weekend and is truly wonderful. That she would fly to Charleston to spend time with us and spend hours and hours talking about Project OKURASE is amazing to me.

MEDAASE Tricia!

No matter your age, you can make a difference too

Waylon and Sandy Henggeler just celebrated their 13th birthday! These extraordinary twins decided that instead of accepting birthday gifts from their friends they would help children struggling with serious challenges in life. They decided to make the children in Okurase, Ghana the focus of their birthday. Together Waylon and Sandy (also known as Santos) raised $365! Here is how the money will be spent…… Girls who do not have an opportunity to go to school because they do not have school uniforms will have uniforms sewed for them. The women of Rhion’s Sewing Centre in Okurase who are sewing to earn a living to care for their own children will sew the uniforms. This means that the benefit of Waylon’s project extends to vulnerable girls and women.  Sandy’s project addresses the children of Ghana’s love for soccer (called football in Ghana). But the boys who love soccer in Okurase have not had the opportunity for this wonderful team sport because there was no equipment. Sandy’s project raised the funds for soccer balls and goals. Now the boys in the village can experience the team work and camraderie that happens with soccer. Sandy’s Project has extended to an entire village of boys. Congrats to parents Melisa and Scott for raising socially aware children who are making a difference.

Progress Report from Okurase

August 31,2009

Today is a great day for the people of Okurase and for Project OKURASE. I just hung up from a phone call to Nana and Betty. They were at the port in Tema. After one long month of daily intensive effort and negotiation, we are finally being allowed to take home our 513 bicycles and 57 sewing machines. The containers were about to be opened as we spoke. I only hope that all the merchandise is still intact. Medaase and great congratulations to Nana and her team. They win the award for persistence and strength.

I immediately called David of Pedals for Progress who sent the shipment. These bicycles are like his children and he doesn’t rest til he knows they are home. David talked to me about how the bicycles alone will change the village economically and I will see evidence of this the next time I am in the village. I can’t wait. David, you can now breathe.

AND THE SEWING that Pedals for Progress made happen…..

Betty and Nana have the sewing centre running full steam. So far they have recruited 6 seasoned sewers and 4 trainees. The sewers have launched full on into making our recycled market bags. Soon they will also be sewing school uniforms. It is so great to see empowerment of women happen before our eyes.

Betty will be bringing back Ghanaian fabric for clothing designer Jodi Lee (www.sandboxrebel.com) to use in her design of children’s clothing. She will launch this line in November. Inner city Los Angeles women in recovery who are interns for Jodi Lee will be sewing the children’s clothing that will be marketed in the U. S. and other countries. Part of the profits will go to Project OKURASE to build the Centre. Also, for every outfit sold money will be available to the women of Rhion’s Sewing Centre in Okurase to sew a school uniform that will be given to an orphaned child to enable her to go to school. Eventually women in Okurase will join their Los Angeles sisters in sewing the children’s clothing.

In closing… Medaase to Pedals for Progress, medaase to Betty, medaase to Capelo and our whole crew in Ghana. Akwaaba to Jodi Lee and Linda McManus. To Nana Ama Yeboah… what do you say about such a woman… the mother of Project OKURASE…the mother of innovation in Ghana.. you amaze me every day and I am so thrilled to have the ongoing opportunity to learn from you. Medaase and me ho wo ekyere.

Cindy

Reflections on Last Days of Ghana Tour

Back in Charleston now having gotten through days of food poisoning that I got on my last day in Ghana. I am so thankful it was the last day instead of the first day. As I was sitting in emergency department I was thinking about how our people in Okurase don’t have this luxury and as I felt I was about to die, if I were in Okurase I would have been closer to that reality over something that is highly fixable. As a health care professional, health care in the U.S. rarely meets my standard and it is so frustrating but it is a rude awakening when you look at there being NO health care available. So, let’s get on it and get this health care centre built.

I tell you I had the greatest surprise of my life that I was able to leave Ghana and actually enter the U.S. with a bag of laterite, a bag of sand, a bag of concrete, and 2 bricks. The architecture school asked me to bring all this back. A brick researcher at Clemson is going to work on our brick making and see if there is a way to improve. What another great gift from Clemson. All I had to do was get through customs with these materials. Ghana allowed me to take it out with Prof. Miller’s email, which they kept. I ran to the internet cafe in Kotoka airport to print out another email verifying why i am bringing soil into the U.S. from Africa. I thought I’d surely need it. As I got off the plane in Chicago there were messages being broadcast about hoof and mouth disease epidemics and the need to declare visitation to rural areas and time around livestock. I felt sure the laterite was history. However, we made it through! I am looking forward to this research and otherwise would never have known that the nation’s top brick researcher is at Clemson.

We are so very fortunate to have partnered with Clemson. They have been so good to us and we are extremely grateful. Aside from their wonderful acts, they are great human beings who we have enjoyed getting to know.

We have been truly truly blessed with relationships from so many angles…

The last days in Ghana were days of interacting with people to finalize important steps and tracking down Obama fabric for Ida. Yes, the country printed lovely fabric to commemorate our President’s visit and of course if Ida Taylor asks me to bring the moon, I of course will do my best to make it happen given that she is the world to me, to Djole, to PO.

We had a short visit with our own Ataa Lartey of the Street Academy and caught up with our new friend from January, Esther Lamptey. Esther for years was the Ghana table tennis champ and she is awesome. She volunteers at the Street Academy.

I wanted to buy a large check check bag and put a large number of people in it and bring them on the plane and to America just to have them around me for a lot of time. PO has so many great friends in Ghana and around the world and we are all coming together to change lives. Thank you to David and Lucia for coming to Ghana and painting the faces and arms of 1400 children. Thank you for your great spirit of caring and helping. We are welcoming Betty Cremmins in the next few days. She is coming to volunteer for PO from New York City and we found her via Pedals4Progress. We have this great container of bikes and sewing machines we are in the process of retrieving from the port in Tema and Betty is going to help us get the sewing centre started up. Medaase to Betty! Medaase to Pedals4Progress.

I am leaving Ghana without seeing our wonderful Walterdee. I am so upset about this and Walterdee I need contact number for you…sorry I missed you this trip. … keep up your great music makin. I am leaving without seeing Chief Nabila…so sorry we did not catch up Prof… next time… I am leaving having made new friends – David, Kwabena, K, David Mensah, Loren, Uncle Russ, Cally, Tina, Sidney, and many others. I am leaving as a much richer woman as Ghana and her people always feed my soul. Medaase to Ghana, to our PO family in America, England, Ghana… until next time.

Cindy

Setting up Office in Ghana

Sitting in the cool Cape Coast air listening to a Ghanaian man sing along with a Dolly Parton cd.. “The coat of many colours that my mama made for me….” The past 4 days have been whirlwind days. Nana and I have been nonstop on the Health Outreach. We are setting up our office and have to have items for it. David and I spent one day walking the market to locate a table, chairs, desk, and carpet. Then we had to load everything on the taxi and go home to unload. Not having transportation is such a challenge. Lucia and David returned from the Volta region and we headed to Okurase on Friday night. It was nice staying in Nkabom house in the village – very quiet. On Saturday morning I managed to miss the 5am jogging group but was us early for the Health Outreach.

The program was well attended. A local medical professional who has lost hope in the people of Okrurase told me that no one ever attends these things. When he walked up and saw over 500 people in attenance He told me they were just there to see the Obruni (white foreign woman). As the day went on he realized it was more than a different skin colour and asked Nana how we did it. He was surprised to hear it was about relationship and interaction.

We officially opened our office, behind the cinema. It is lovely. The doors and windows were painted with a nice green oil based paint. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t keep anyone from touching the wet paint. We even did a reading lesson with the children. Nonetheless, the majority of the village ended up green.

We learned that USA for Africa has donated the funds to cover vision care for the village and will do this donation through Project OKURASE. At the Outreach we had vision screening, dental screening, nutrition, HIVAIDS information, and environmental cleanliness. It was a great day despite the village’s expectation that having come to Ghana 5 times I would surely be fluent in Twi.

After the outreach, I came with Power to Cape Coast. As you enter town, the most striking think is all the Welcome/Akwaaba signs. The whole Obama family is much loved. We visited New LIfe orpahanage and interacted with the kids. Power performed with the opening of Panafest.

Tomorrow shoudl involve a lot of planning in preparation of the great many things ahead this week -bicycles and sewing macines.

It’s good to have electicity and running water.

Cindy
Swenson

Update 3 from Ghana – July 17-18, 2009

Am writing for two days as internet access was spotty yesterday. We started our day spending hours getting together documents for tax exemption and shipping. The packet is massive. I realized how much I take for granted being able to print something out from my computer and photocopy in about 5 minutes. It changes the scope a bit when you have to travel a long way and wait in a long line and then take a long time to photocopy. But in the end we got it together.

We also had to develop a project profile. Seems that our project needs to be registered with every government agency that might ever relate to what we do. This way those agencies can connect us with private funders looking for NGO’s to work with. So we now have our profile.

We then went to visit the Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs. This was the first Minister to visit of the new administration. Turns out the Minister had to run to parliament and asked us to meet with her Deputy Chief. This was a good turn of events as he fell in love with Project OKURASE and is on board helping us with the tax exemption and customs. We have rescheduled with the Minister. All of this took a day and the better part of a night. We took the very long tro tro ride home and I figured out I am doing pretty well in Ghana if I can sleep in a tro tro over very bumpy roads.

Early Saturday morning I went to the Street Academy to participate in a walk. They are our close partners and we want to support them in whatever way we can. We had kept my being in town a secret from Ataa Lartey, the Executive Director. He was very shocked when I showed up for the walk. It was so great.

The walk itself involved over 100 children and I noted the irony or perhaps the metaphor of trying to keep street children in the “right” lane (or the most positive side of the street) while the dangers are zooming by. Streets don’t get closed off for walks or races. My job was to walk on the outside and keep the children safe from the cars while dancing and taking photos. The boys were oblivious and tended to veer in the bad lane without realizing it as they danced and hit each other and pushed. The girls tended to veer in the bad lane with greater purpose and rule breaking intent but were guided back rapidly. We ended the walk near independence square and had a bit of a celebration. The Street Academy raised a bit of money and a lot of awareness. It was good.

Later after banku with Street Academy friends we arrived back at the Arts Centre. I learned that an important drummer had died and his funeral was that day. So there was a memorial going on and I attended on behalf of Project OKURASE. It was an all out celebration of this man’s life-amazing dancing and drumming. I had a chance to see many people who know Djole and always ask about the children and we sang songs about when is Djole coming back to Ghana.

After leaving the Arts Centre, our taxi driver, Uncle Russ picked me up and he, Kwabena and I headed to the airport to pick up David and Lucia from England. David is a builder and Lucia a teacher and they are here to help. We are extremely grateful. After a series of mishaps and nearly picking up the wrong group (one that included 18 kids rather than 2 adults), we finally found them and headed back to Dansoman to Nana’s house. All lights were off everywhere and we learned that Nana has had spotty electricity all day and night. Another thing I take for granted.

It has been a good day of connection and re-connection with partners that are precious to us and critical to the success of the work we are doing here. It is amazingly cool in Accra.

Everyone has been talking about Obama’s visit. It seems that prior to his visit the rains were heavy day and night and when he came to Ghana the rain stopped. Everyone was very upbeat about his speech here and many of the road signs expressed Akwaaba to the Obama family. He is loved here and word on the street is Michelle is actually Ghanaian. I am certain I have to write a letter to our President. He has done well.

More soon,
Cindy

Update 2 from Ghana – July 16, 2009

Today has been a day of taking care of many little things and some big things mainly related to carpentry. The roofing panels arrived at Nkabom house to repair the two small houses. We have opened an office in a building on Okurase’s main road and needed to repair the ceiling before we can move in. All this is taking place mainly over the phone with the help of many many people. We are very fortunate to have tapped into a group of people in Accra who just want to help and will do whatever possible to be involved.

Nana and I met Abibata today. She is a representative of a women’s group in Tamale in northern Ghana. Together with this group, some women in Okurase will start a fruit drying business. We visited African Women’s Development Fund to inquire about grant funds for the fruit drying training. Abibata and I will write a grant before I leave. She is wonderful and a very interesting person. She is a filmmaker, mainly of documentaries and a colleague of Dominique, a woman I have met in Cambridge and come to know.

We visited Dr. Kofi and Mrs. Vivian Ghartey with Site for Africa. They were thrilled with the Shrek spectacles Rhion sent and these will be put to good use in the vision clinic we are holding on the July 25th. Mrs. Ghartey, we learned, is expert in shipping and has given us good tips to proceed.

We traveled to Osu to get a wireless modem set up so that we can access internet when possible without having to go to an internet cafe. Everyone please be patient with us. Regardless of access, sometimes it takes 3-5 minutes to open a message. We set up a telephone dedicated to the project

As I write we are sitting at Nana’s table printing out shipping documents. We are working on our NGO tax exemption and preparing for the arrival of our bikes and sewing machines!

Otherwise, Nana’s adorable and bright 3-year-old daughter, Nana Serwaa is keeping us entertained.

More tomorrow as we plan to be up and going well before the African sunrise.

Cindy