How You Can Help - Ashanti Development - Supporting Village Projects in Ghana

How You Can Help

Individuals

We're always looking for volunteers to teach English, reading and writing in an Ashanti school - for as long as they choose. We'll help them fundraise for their fares and living expenses and they can stay free of charge in Gyetiase and commute to work by bicycle.

We hope doctors from the UK will want to visit the clinic occasionally and carry out more complex health procedures. So if you have medical equipment to spare, or if you are a doctor or nurse who would like to spend a few weeks in Ghana, we would love to talk to you.

We collect second-hand spectacles to take to villages in the Ashanti Region. They are graded by James Conn, director of our local Specsavers branch, and distributed by teams of opthalmologists from SpecSavers shops all over the country.

If you'd like to help and your skills aren't mentioned on the list, please tell us about yourself as we may well have other work which would suit you. Be prepared to provide names and contact details of references.

We sell woodcarvings from the wood carving school we set up in Gyetiase, and we're happy to take commissions for special orders. Please contact us if you know someone who might be interested, or alternatively anyone who might give a hand running a stall.

We buy kente cloth in Ashanti, a traditional cotton weave which is expensive to make or sell. We also bring back strips of cotton cloth, printed with a kente design. Our volunteers make these up into items to sell, and could do with a few more pairs of hands.

Organisations

Ashanti Development's five-year target is to work with 220 Ashanti villages and we're always on the lookout for organisations to help us achieve this.

For example, community groups like Rotary Clubs may be interested in Adopting a Village. This could be done in many ways, but we would like to suggest that a nominated representative first visits the village and, together with the chief, elders and town committee, draws up a strategy for its development. They would then return to the UK to raise the funds to put the strategy into practice.

Ashanti Development would do all it could to help, particularly at the start, but would aim eventually to stand back and allow the relationship to develop without its intervention.

Ashanti schools typically have crumbling buildings which let in the rain, few or no textbooks or teaching equipment, and teachers who cannot speak English although the children must learn English before they can read or write. If a UK school took responsibility for helping an Ashanti school by providing equipment, setting up penpal arrangements and encouraging its teachers to visit, it would make an enormous difference to the children's chances in life.

Ghanaians are deeply religious and many Christian, Islamic and Jewish organisations in Ghana would welcome communication and help from their UK counterparts. Youth and sporting clubs could play similar roles.

It goes without saying that we always need money

For example:

photo of child with misformed legs

Child with misformed legs

Thank you for anything you can give.