Loretta, one of our volunteers from this past summer, has created a great video about Ghanain culture and our school, the AYI Owen International School.  To help us further our efforts and hopefully create other schools, please donate now.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=95jeNnF5njc

As you know, For One World was founded over 10 years ago to help children in Ghana, West Africa get a basic education. Over the years we have grown steadily and continue to improve our model. We have impacted thousands of children’s lives through the help and support from all of you.

Do you want to help a child in Ghana have a better life?

Iona (volunteer from France) paid her own way to the school, donated her time to work with the community and identified kids who can’t afford education. We estimate the current cost is $263 per year based on current exchange rates and current cost of living. Over the next several years I don’t expect the costs to go above the $1 per day watermark. This amount covers school fees, uniforms, shoes, health insurance, and school materials.

We want to expand the number of people we are helping.  To do that we need longer term commitments on the money we collect, or we risk impacting a family’s future – These children are the future for the entire family! I would like to pair donors with kids in Ghana more directly than we have in the past. I am looking for donors who can make a long term commitment (ie the length of time the student remains in school) to help pay for that child’s education. The birthdays below can give you a sense of your time commitment. A few will have strong enough grades to actually make it to college… we will handle those students as special cases.

The following children can’t afford an education and their families need help:

1. Regina, birthday 2nd November 2006

2. Alima, birthday 8th March 2005

3. Hagar, birthday 15th August 1998

4. Mamata, birthday 8th October 1998

5. Faruk, birthday 11th October 1994

6. Adissa, birthday 21st January 1997

7. Ali, birthday 7th December 2000

8. Mary, birthday 3rd July 1998

If you (or your group/organization) are interested and you can afford to make a long term commitment of “$1 per day” to For One World please let me know. 

Thank you!

-James

James@ForOneWorld.org

PS Of course we cannot afford an accounting system to track donations by child and we don’t have any paid employees to give frequent dedicated updates on each child to each donor… However if you sponsor a child and want an email update, picture or even would like us to put that child on the phone with you – let us know and we can try to accommodate. 

Donate.ForOneWorld.org

There will also be numerous raffles/silent auctions INCLUDING a 2 hour private cruise for four leaving NYC with drinks and snacks included, and Yankees tickets. Come and bring your friends!!

1. Healthcare – Children can have easily curable diseases that need to be addressed for the child to be able to focus on learning
2. Clothing and shoes – In a cash society, one of the criteria of a “needy child” is one without shoes and tattered clothing.
3. Books, notebooks, pencils, etc. – When parents can’t afford flip flops, books don’t make the priority list, so that needs to be provided.
4. School fees

Although the town of Bouyem was only located 8km away, the road there was quite bad.  There were large ruts in the road cut out by the heavy rains and the bus struggled through it.  Luckily we were warned that we would need long pants, shoes, and hats for the day because the trails and caves would be muddy.  We had to pick up a guide first from the town before traveling to the trail head.

The cave went in fairly deep, required getting low again but then opened up to reveal caverns with a ceiling high enough to stand in.  We could hear the bats in the cave before we entered.  The guide explained that these were smaller bats, but there were thousands of them inhabiting the caves.  We could not see the bats at first, only hear them whizzing by our heads.  In this cave, there were two openings in the ceilings that let natural light inside.  The cave was said to be inhabited by the local tribes people seeking refuge during a war many years ago.  This was seen by the evidence of cave drawings and worn rock carvings present on the cave floors and walls.

On our way to the third and final cave, we stopped upon a rock face that had an amazing panoramic view of the lush countryside.  The children had a blast playing on the rocks and it was difficult to get them to leave.  We finally arrived at the last cave which the guide described as containing much larger bats. He also mentioned that we would not be leaving through the same way we entered.  This cave was the most impressive and also had the most history to it.  It was discovered by hunters for the Ashanti tribe.  They caught a bat, cooked it, fed it to a dog, and when they realized the dog did not die, they knew they could eat the bats.  They held the bats as sacred and bat meat became a large part of their diet.  Eventually a war broke out, and the chiefs had to hide in the caves for shelter.  Some people died in the caves, and so out of respect, our guide did a ceremonial libation to the chiefs before we entered.  He took some schnapps, spit it into the air then said a prayer and poured it on the ground.  He offered for us to drink some, but because we wanted to hike out alive we kindly refused.  The libation was to ensure nothing bad would happen to us in the cave.

This cave again required us to crawl on our hands and knees, but this time through a narrow passage.  Bats were flying everywhere as we tried to maneuver through a small tunnel.  It was quite the experience.  The tunnel finally opened up to a large room with a ladder to climb out.  We climbed the ladder and then had to scurry up vines to fully get out of the caves.

The guide caught one of the larger bats and brought it outside for us to hold.  Its wingspan was about a foot and a half in length and it was one of the weirder things I have ever held.  Its bones were so thin and light I thought it might break when it flapped its wings in my grasp.  Its wings were made out of a flexible and stretchy, leathery skin.  The bat tried biting me when I held it, so I held it just long enough for a picture before handing it to an eagerly awaiting student.

The tour was finally over and we headed back to where our bus had last left us. We had come full circle and the trip had taken a little more than two hours, not bad with all the kids.

Thank you to all who have made a generous financial donation to For One World in 2009! If you are considering a donation, this is a great organization with a track record of success and zero overhead. Even a small donation goes a long way in Ghana.

Donate.ForOneWorld.org

In 2009 we helped support 14 orphans living at the school providing food, shelter, schooling, clothing, love and a great basic education. We supported dozens of children via scholarships, mostly for girls and the poorest in the community by helping to provide basic education, shoes, clothing and medical care.  Alex Van Voorhees coordinated four outstanding volunteers who donated their own time and money to help with skills not locally available: Loretta Cremmins, Max Alderman, Caitlin Mackeown, and Betty Cremmins. These volunteers helped Ayi Owen International School once again attain a rank academically in the top 10% of all schools in the district. Zachary Cutler and Lizzy Edelstein coordinated the most successful gift drive to date thanks to in part by the generosity from the Bridget Kelly Peterson family and Erica Myrickes. It is an honor to be collaborating with so many talented volunteers like John Donelly, Michele Palma and Dan Ochs who have spent countless hours of service
managing our 501c3 nonprofit accounting, acknowledgements and website respectively.

We continue to make improvements to the buildings at the new school site and have expanded to almost 400 students. This is possible through the financial generosity of the Bill Owen family, Anne Ochs family, James Alderman family, Gretchen Peterson and Leverett Smith as well as many others. We can be most thankful in 2009 for founder Ayisatu’s successful operation and return to health.  Thank you!

Looking forward to a great 2010!
James

The ceremony began with a prayer and then introductions.  The event was run by the master of ceremonies and one of the school’s teachers, Somaila.  He does a great job controlling the order of the program and interacting with the audience.  The ceremony contained many traditions, the first of which involved the kindergarten class standing coming on stage and performing a song for the audience.  The students then proceeded to change into athletic clothes to play games.  Everyone transitioned over to the fields to watch the children compete in tug of war, sack races, and spoon balancing races.  It was adorable to watch and the parents enjoyed the fun competition.

After the field games had finished, the students changed into their cultural uniforms.  They performed a play and then a cultural dance they had been working hard on all semester.  Still in their same uniforms, each child stepped up to the podium and recited a poem of their choice.  This took some time as you can imagine, but it was a pleasure to hear the students that were strong public speakers.  For students that performed particularly well, parents and others from the audience would throw money at them to donate towards the school.  One boy cried every time he had to speak publicly, this brought much laughter from the student body and I felt so bad for him.

The class then went into the library to change into their blue graduating gowns complete with caps and kente cloth lining.  During this time, the lower school held a dance competition to pass the time.  Finally the kindergarten class returned in their robes and strolled two by two onto the center stage to receive their official diplomas.  After each student received his/her certificate their picture was taken with their respective parents who were in attendance, which was mostly mothers.  Every mother in the audience seemed to be carrying a baby which I also found interesting.

The ceremony crawled on in typical Ghanaian fashion with more announcements and presentations. I was amazed at the patience exercised by the rest of the lower class school-mates that continued watching attentively.  Many pictures were taken throughout the ceremony by a hired photographer and I was flabbergast to see some parents in the audience already holding printed pictures of their child!  I discovered later that the dj’s had brought a printer on site which the man was using to print pictures straight from his digital camera.  It was actually a great idea and the man was surely turning a nice profit.

After many grueling hours the ceremony finally came to a close. Mmaa and Bill both looked very pleased with the way things went and it was great to witness such a meaningful milestone event in the children’s lives.  It was especially nice to see Mohammed, one of the children from the house, graduate with his classmates.

The taxi dropped us off in the middle of the market.  The market was everything we had heard and more.  It was full of people and booths containing every item imaginable.  We had a list of items we wanted to buy including onions, green peppers, carrots, beans, rice, eggs, oil, and oatmeal.  The vegetables were much cheaper than we expected.  All of the vegetables came to be around 5 dollars US.  We purchased 15 eggs for around two dollars.

I also wanted to purchase a traditional African tunic.  A man was trying to help me buy one and I had to try to tell him that I did not want one of the many used westernized shirts that have been imported from America.  I finally found a blue, white, and black striped, hand woven tunic which they referred to as a fugu or smok, that I liked and fit me well.  It came to 30 cedi which was much more expensive than I had planned, but I really needed another shirt to wear.

We were fortunate to have Miriam with us to negotiate prices to ensure we were not getting ripped off.  We walked all across the market multiple times picking items up from the best places.  There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it and we consequently covered a lot of ground.  We spent a full hour and a half at the market in total.  It was an exhausting experience.  Taxis and cargo trucks constantly honk their horns to tell people to move out of the way on small busy streets.  This is better still then men with overfilled wheelbarrows and women carrying large loads on their heads that plow through the streets without giving you warning.

Loretta and I are also more of a spectacle walking through the market.  Many people shout at us and run up to touch us.  We get many marriage proposals from random strangers that want us to take them to America.

We first saw a woman cutting the cassava root by removing the outside and revealing the white starchy inside.  Next, the starchy remains are fed through a pulverizer attached to a conveyer belt.  This crushed the root into a finer white powder.  The people who ran these machines would get covered in the white powder and it was a heat producing process contained in a small room. Inhaling the particles seemed inevitable.  The powder was then taken outside, water is added to it and it is packed into large bags to ferment.  The bags are then placed in a oversized vice where the water is pressed out of the cassava and it is left to dry in the sun.  This did not smell so good.

After this process the product is sent to another woman who places the cassava on a large metal stove with fire underneath.  The woman moves the powder around with metal ladles to ensure the product is evenly toasted.  This section smelled like smartfood popcorn for some reason.

The mother of one of the students actually worked at the plant and so she stood as the children asked her many questions they had formulated during the tour.  The children did this for a solid half hour and were very interested in the production method.  Meanwhile our group had attracted a good deal of attention from the local townspeople.  Children huddled around our group and would stare at us.  It was quite the interesting experience.  The final product made was called Gari.  It is a traditional food of Ghana that they use to add to dishes to enhance flavor and increase thickness.