In 2018 fourteen of my classmates and I travelled to Ghana in Africa for a month of volunteering. We spent time at two schools that were partnered with our own in the UK , Dwabor MA School and Ayemsudo Islamic School. Our objective was to help the local people, as well as the school in whatever way we could, where we were needed. We brought materials, games and clothes for the children and donated an amount of money to their school and to the village. Part of the challenge for this trip was to raise your own funds. I raised £2,700 for all the travel costs, accommodation, vaccinations and donations to the village and school. The fundraising was challenging and at 14 years old it seemed almost impossible, but I managed it.
I began my find raising by starting a café with a friend on the side of a club football pitch.
Come rain, snow and occasional sun we served teas and coffees, made brownies at 6am and filled urns in advance as we had no electricity at the sports grounds...... Bacon butties all round, as well! After a year or so it had earned us the majority of the money required. This was followed by a summer of village fetes where we ran a jail for all the villagers to have their nearest and dearest arrested!
This ended up being great fun and also very financially successful. It did the trick and our target was raised.
From our first night in Ghana, we danced and sang around a campfire with all of the students. We brought hundreds of books and completely refurbished their library by painting the walls and building new bookshelves. We all held a pre-planned lesson to teach some of the younger children (?). I made a hand calved drum out of local cows skin, which I still have today, this was a fascinating experience. We had a buddy system where we were partnered up with a local student of similar age who showed us around, we met their family and gave them gifts. My buddy was called ? On a dusty pitch we played a friendly game of football against the local kids, and met their area professional team. We showered out of a bucket and slept in a classroom on camp beds it was the most extraordinary experience and i'm still in contact with my buddy today.
I learnt so much from this trip, from cultural differences to minimalism. It taught me how one can live a very simple life and be extremely happy. I also encountered a major struggle about 5 months after the trip, when I was diagnosed with malaria. I was very sick for just over a month and that made me value life and experiences that much more.
We first identified all the problems we needed to solve.
We planned out how we were gonna solve the problems.
We worked almost everyday as a team to rebuild and refurbish parts of the school.
We planned at the end of each day how we would use our time the next day effectively.
We had to understand the how the children learnt diffrently which was interesting.
There was a lot of emotion envolved when some of the older kids were asking for money. Regulation of emotion was important.
I was aware of the impact we had on the locals bringing such a change in culture.
We all had to work and communicate as a team when completing tasks. Assigning roles and executing the jobs.
It felt like we had purpose when we were there, to listen and learn from the people and to respectfully offer them help
Teaching classes was a real challenge as the younger students level of english was low. It was a fun challenge to find ways to teach them