Akwaaba! (welcome)

Hi everyone, welcome to my first blog (ever)! As many of you know I’ll be spending the next 3 and a half months in Ghana as a part of an Engineers Without Borders (EWB) volunteer program: the Junior Fellowship in International Development (JF for short).
For the next 4 months+ I’ll do my best to offer a glimpse into the development work, culture, challenges, experiences, personal feelings, and beauty of the small piece of Ghana where I’ll be living and working. Please feel free to contact me through email, phone, or commenting on blog posts, I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you!

I should warn you that there will probably lots of acronyms used (development is notorious for this I hear) so I’ll post something on the side bar of this blog with a list of any acronyms used, and I’ll try to not to use them too much.

Here’s a little info about the JF program and what I’ll be doing in Ghana:

The JF program is a four month overseas volunteer placement for university students where EWB partners up with local non-government and government organizations. There’s really two parts of the JF program: one is working and offering outsider perspectives and assistance to local development organizations, and the second is back in Canada sharing your experience with people and trying to influence attitudes and behaviours that can lead to some much needed positive changes in a world where billions of people are working to break through the cycle of poverty, especially in ‘developing’ countries. What this may look like or pan out to be, I’ll post about when I return, but for now if you’re interested in what EWB does in Canada or Windsor specifically check out these websites: www.ewb.ca, www.uwindsor.ewb.ca.

I’ll be working with the Ghanaian Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) in the Upper East Region. My placement is with MoFA at the district level, which is equivalent to municipal level here, where I’ll be working with agriculture extension agents (AEAs) to help implement the agriculture as a business program. Basically, the just of my work will be working with extension agents who will be meeting with farmer group trying encourage them to adopt more business oriented practices in regards to their crops, inputs like fertilizer and seeds, and the like, so they can get their crops into the market and improve the efficiency of their small scale farms in order to make more money. It’s important to note here that scale farming makes up a huge percentage of livelihoods in Northern Ghana, and in the Upper East Region the poverty rate is an astounding 88%. Yet from talking with volunteers past and present people have so much pride and respect and maintain very positive attitudes while working so hard to make ends meet. I’m intrigued to see this first hand and contrast it to here in Canada where many people (my self included) complain and are negative while having so much privilege and opportunity. I’m pretty curious to see how my perspectives are similar and/or different from the people I encounter in Ghana.

In terms of work, my perspective from here in Canada right now is that I’ll be working with MoFa and AEA’s to help farmers make more from their crops so they can buy food, medicine, send their kids to school, buy housing materials, or a multitude of any other things women and men purchase. It sounds kind of simple but I think it might be pretty complex and with challenges as well as success abound.

As for living arrangements: I’ll be living with a host family and trying to understand to the best of my ability what it’s like to live in Northern Ghana. I’ll be sure to take many photos although I’m not sure how many I’ll be able to post from Ghana due to the dial up internet connection, we’ll see how things go, but I’ll definitely post all of them when I return.

So it’s already April 12 and I’m set to leave for Toronto for a week of training before I fly out on May 5th! Where did the time go? Let me tell ya, I’m having some difficulty actually focusing on exams and final papers with all this floating around in my head. My mood/feelings have been all over the place lately from excited, nervous, sad about leaving friends and family, happy to have the privilege of this coming experience, confident, worried, and other emotions that I can’t think of right now. One of the main things I’m kind struggling with in my head is that I know this will be a great experience for me and “it will change your life” as I’ve heard from many people, and at the end of it all realistically I will most likely have benefitted the most, but I plan on doing everything humanly possible to ensure that this placement is not all about me. Whether it be through work, personal interactions and relationships, EWB’s long term overseas volunteers and work, this blog, email or phone conversations, or through influence back in Canada, I’ll do my best to have some positive impact.

So I guess I rap up this post by mentioning EWB’s ultimate goal and what we’re all working towards: a world with equal opportunities for all and an end to poverty. Now it can seem insurmountable especially if you follow mainstream media or read and research all the problems in the world or believe that humans are inherently greedy and power hungry. But I think we can all look to history in order to realize that it is what some people call “idealists” who have created the most amazing and unthinkable change. Here’s some examples: Abolition of slavery, civil rights movement, South African Apartheid, and women’s rights (even though we still have a long way to go). If you look at any of these accomplishments in context and think about someone saying in the 50’s, for instance, that an African American would become president they would be have laughed at and people would have written them off as an idealist. And to add to this example of civil rights, Mr. Luther King Jr. wasn’t the civil rights movement, there were thousands of women and men working hard and making small changes that lead up a large change/victory. So the point that I’m making here is that something such as extreme poverty and inequality can be changed and it’s small the changes that lead to great things.