Volunteering in Ghana

Volunteering in Ghana

EXIS organizes volunteer work stays in Ghana. Your stay begins with airport pick-up in Accra, where you will spend one night and get a short orientation. Afterwards you will be taken to your workplace, and begin volunteering. Volunteering is a unique way to discover a country, its culture and people while doing a meaningful job. You must be at least 18 years old, independent, outgoing and genuinely interested in volunteering. volunteering.

Food and accommodation

Accommodation during voluntary work depends on your project. Most volunteers will stay with a host family in a single room. Usually families have more than one volunteer living at their house. Social interaction with the family members is restricted and you probably will eat with the other volunteers. At least one family member speaks English. If you work in an orphanage you might stay at the orphanage. You will get 3 meals a day throughout the program.

Don’t expect luxury.

The Projects in Ghana

Below is a description of volunteer projects or internships available in Ghana. Please note that minimum age is 18. Parents and children can be accepted at some projects.

Orphanages

The project aims to provide an opportunity for needy children and orphans to live and learn under one roof until they are adopted or integrated in the community or placed with family members, who can take better care of them. Due to extreme poverty, neglect and abuse, many children in Ghana are forced to leave their homes to live on the streets or forced into child labor and trafficking. The society also looks down upon them and they mostly live under bad conditions. Volunteer’s role in an orphanage depends on the need of the home as well as the skills and interests of the volunteer. However, volunteers will be involved in the following tasks:

• Develop creative activities such as dance, arts, music, etc.
• Clean, cook and serve food
• Organize physical and sports activities
• Assist the staff in counseling the children
• Supervising day-to-day activities of the children at the orphanage (e.g., sweeping, bathing, washing, feeding in the morning afternoon and evening.)
• Assisting in keeping the children’s rooms clean, planning extracurricular activities, physical education, music and culture, indoor and outdoor games, morning and evening studies, organizing beach and farm trips, excursions, etc.
• Helping prepare teaching and learning materials for the pre-school

Volunteers must have love and patience for children and be very creative.
Your task will be:

• Wake children in the morning and be sure they bathe
• Help with breakfast before sending them off to school
• Help with homework
• Help to rehabilitate the physically disabled people and reintegrate them back to their families
• Provide counseling services to street children

Teaching English

Although there is a curriculum in place in every school, the daily routine differs from day to day. This depends on the availability of teachers and materials and other influencing circumstances like the weather. You can teach in both regular school and special schools. Each intern and/or volunteer can be assigned to any of the schools, depending on wishes and skills.

The demand for English is growing rapidly in developing countries and Ghana is no exception. English is the gateway to good jobs and the younger generation is eager to learn to speak good English.

Although Ghana is an English speaking country, many school children cannot communicate in English. This is why there is a great need to recruit and place volunteers in communities that lack teachers who are up to the task. The project seeks to stimulate school children’s interest and curiosity so they will want to study and speak proper English and at the same time offer our foreign volunteers a unique opportunity to learn and experience the Ghanaian culture.

This project helps the primary and junior secondary class children between the age of 5-10 and 11-16 to learn English and also get education on math and science. Volunteers will be provided teaching resources to aid their work at the school. Usually you will teach about 18 hours of conversational English lessons per week. You will also need to take time to prepare your lessons and correct your students work. Many volunteers choose to help out in other areas too, helping students with extra-curricular activities like sports, drama or music lessons for example. Arrangement can be made for you to teach in a pre-school if that is your preference. Volunteers must be able to speak English or have at least High School Diploma.

Examples of teaching are English, math, health and hygiene and computer technology. It is important though to have affinity with education, especially in case of assignment to special education. It is also important to have a high school diploma in English and have good knowledge of the subject that you will be teaching.

Teaching is based on the syllabus of the Ghana Education Service and this will be made available to all volunteers after an orientation.

Teaching placements are not available during school holidays, so if you plan to participate in a teaching placement, please take the school term dates into account when planning the timing of your project.

Dates for the school terms (semesters) are:

1st Term approx. mid September to just before Christmas
2nd Term approx early January to beginning of April
3rd Term Beginning of May to late July

Volunteers do not need to have specific qualifications, but you should have a good knowledge of the subject you want to teach. Self-reliance, independence and initiative are highly appreciated and a sense of humour when the electricity fails or buses don’t turn up will help you to make the most of this wonderful opportunity!

Teaching at Pre-schools. Nurseries and kindergartens is also possible.

Special Education

The Community Inclusive Special School in Kpando aims to provide a better future for children with a disability. The school was founded in 1993. The founder has a son with a disability and is a witness of the exclusion of people with disabilities in Ghana. He started the school to promote inclusion and the right for all children to have access to education. The school was run privately for five years, until finally the Ghanaian Education Service realized the validity and importance of the school, and registered it into the public system in 2000. In 2008 the school was placed under Government Subvention whereby Feeding Administration and Service grants have been extended to the school.

The students are 6 to 30 years old and have different disabilities. There are students with autism, Down syndrome and learning disabilities. The school staff consists of six certified teachers, a director, a secretary, two kitchen staff members and a concierge. The school compound lies on the top of a hill, between farming land. There are three classes in the school that slightly differ in academic level. There is a large focus on vocational skills. The goal of the school is for each student to graduate with a skill that can help them generate their own income, allowing them to lead independent and healthy lives.

Volta School for the Deaf

The school was started in 1971 and resides in Hohoe. Primarily the school was hosting both students with a hearing impairment and students with learning disabilities, even though the main form of communication was sign language. Instead of using speech, the students with learning disabilities also started to use sign language. Since 2006 the students have been separated into two groups, each in their own building, with their own specialized education.

There are students with various degrees of hearing at the Volta School for the Deaf.

There are students with various degrees of hearing at the Volta School for the Deaf. Some students hear minimally, but not enough to produce speech. Some students were born deaf; others became deaf during their childhood.

The school is a boarding institution and currently houses about 270 students. There are about 30 teachers. Each teacher is trained in a certain subject. The children write the same exams as students in regular education. The classes go from kindergarten, to primary school, to junior high school, to vocational training. The vocational department teaches weaving, sewing, carpentry and tie and dye.

Kpando Health Center

The Kpando Health Center is a governmental clinic which provides general outpatient care, inpatient delivery care and community health education. The centre is about forty years old and is located at the Municipality Assembly of the Kpando Municipality, where the Ghana Health Service is represented with the Municipality’s health care management, a nutrition unit, a disease control unit, a public health unit and statistics unit. The health centre consists of several buildings with an outpatient department, a child welfare clinic, a psychiatric unit, a public health unit and a laboratory. A surgical room for caesareans is in construction.

A volunteer or intern will get the opportunity to observe and shadow the nurses and doctors at the outpatient department. It is also possible to observe and assist at the public health unit. The actual role in the health centre depends on qualifications. A student will mainly observe and assist. A qualified medical professional, will be given more tasks and responsibilities. He or she might be asked to organize training for the staff members of the hospital to share knowledge and experience.

Health Outreach

Our health outreach projects range from home visits to community members to doing mass community testing on hypertension and diabetes. All year round we run a wound care outreach project in which volunteers visit patients with chronic ulcers six days a week to provide basic wound care, basic wound care education and basic psychological support. We can also organize home visits to patients who need physical therapy in order to provide them with the necessary tools and exercise plan.

Disability Project

One of the outcomes of our disability research showed that there is a need for empowerment groups for people living with a disability. Handicapped people feel excluded from society and feel that they don’t have a voice when it comes to community decisions. By setting up empowerment groups with the help of local churches, we aim to empower handicapped people and help them voicing out their opinions and concerns. Working on this project means visiting the empowerment group meetings to report on their activities, needs and questions.

In October 2012 we started to provide outreach wound care to several patients with chronic ulcers. Qualified health workers (volunteers, or interns) visited the patients six days a week to provide basic wound care, basic wound care education and basic psychological support. The wound care will be continued and if possible expanded to other communities. A start will be made to implement the recommendations of the disability research. These will mainly focus on providing people living with a disability with the information they need in order to improve their quality of life.

School Painting and Construction Program

We are looking for volunteers to paint and renovate some of the supported local schools located at Ziavi and Ho. Volunteers will engage in construction activities such as digging, mixing sand and cement, carrying bricks, sand, fetching water and painting school buildings. They will be led and work together with local skilled people who will be providing free labor for the improvement of their communities.

Some of the most important work that needs to be done in developing communities is setting up basic infrastructure. Helping communities through building lays a foundation that will allow locals to continue with your efforts even after your volunteer work abroad has ended. Volunteers will also draw educative objects on school walls.

Volunteers must be strong and healthy.

IT training to laboratory technicians

If you have good knowledge of IT and Excel based programs, you can participate in this project, that aims to help the local health care facilities with digitalizing the patient registration in the laboratories.

Observations showed that the pressure on the laboratories could be significantly reduced by digitalizing the patient registration system, as this will improve the effectiveness.

A training program for laboratory technicians in using an Excel-based patient registration system was started in 2013. At least two staff members of each laboratory have to be educated to become a trainer for the other technicians. Together with them a good patient registration system will be set up, after which other staff members will be trained in using the system.

Health education

The health education project involves Junior High School students, their peers and their teachers. A health drama club was started consisting of young people who have finished JHS, but are not yet enrolled in Senior High School. This drama club provides performances on different health topics at schools and in communities throughout the Kpando Municipality. Staff members, interns and volunteers guide the group and teach them about the different health topics. The group consists of some Junior High School students. Based on the lessons they have received they have designed drama performances on the health topic.

Classes in topics like malaria, HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse, nutrition/physical education, oral hygiene, personal hygiene and environmental hygiene are also arranged. Brochures with health education have been sponsored by EXIS and are widely used in the area.
C.P.R. and first aid classes are also being held for health care facilities and other interested organizations, or individuals.

Volunteers or interns that are certified CPR instructors can teach these very popular classes. A C.P.R. box with an inflatable C.P.R. doll, a respirator and other tools are available. The project is very focused on HIV/AIDS education and information. Every year on December 1, World AIDS Day, the project organizes a big football tournament to create awareness on HIV/AIDS.

Research

This program suits volunteers with an academic background.

An extensive health research in the Kpando Municipality showed that health care is low due to financial and geographical restraints. There is a lack of equipment, staff, training and drugs and a general lack of hygiene. In all communities poverty and lack of knowledge are considered important causes to health problems and it is recommended to provide health information and education for community members. According to the outcomes of the research done in 2012, further research will be done on antenatal, delivery and postnatal care.

A thorough research on HIV/AIDS in the Kpando Municipality is planned in the second quarter of 2013. The ultimate goal is to reduce the number of HIV/AIDS cases, to increase the knowledge on disease prevention and treatment, and to decrease the HIV/AIDS stigma.

Research would help finding answers to questions like: who are all the stakeholders in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS? Why do current programs not seem to work? Does stigma really play such a big role and what can we do to decrease this?

Only few participants are needed in the research program each year.