Latest news from the village and our various projects
Improvement in Family Houses
Resident at the children village has enjoyed in the last months improvements in their apartment. Until now all family houses have been furnished with short blade ceiling fans to provide ventilation, an improvement all residents have long waited for.
Also included was a TV for entertainment and leisure periods. The kids were the most excited, now they can watch some educative programs. Both kids and mothers are happy about these improvements and held a huge meeting to set rules for effective and wise use since the equipment depends on our solar energy. Kids are only allowed to watch TV on weekend and under the supervision of a mother.
Donation for School
The Old Adwampong School has had its share of these developments since the last 3 months.New set of exercise and reading books were donated to the school. For the kindergarten class, they were given in addition colour pencils, A4 sheets for drawing and painting.
Also supplied were new mattresses for the kindergarten class, and a container for keeping their small playing toys.Additionally, whiles 2 pieces of teacher’s chairs were given to the school for classes 3 and 5, the school canteen received 50kg bag of rice to support the pantry. Until now are classroom cabinets to be constructed to help in storage of students’ books and other teacher and learning materials.
Holidays in Accra
Four kids together with three adults from the project enjoyed a wonderful time in Accra during a four days holiday trip in May this year. The excited kids (Maame Yaa, Ebenezer, George Junior and Blessing) woke very early at 5am in the morning because they were elevated and couldn’t wait until the morning sun rose. Places visit in Accra were memorial parks, huge shopping centres, restaurants and the Labadi beach. The kids were thrilled to have these experiences for the first time and it was as well an amazing time for the caregivers who also joined the trip.
Kwadjo Amankwaa Disability
Kwadjo Kwadjo is a 12-year boy suffering from severe disability. He has physical limbs but unable to use them due to his disability. As a result, he is unable to walk or hold anything with his hands or legs and therefore depends on people around him for support to do basic things such as movement, use the toilet or even eat. Due to his severe condition, his family especially his mother has been his caregiver ever since he was born.
LoszuGhana Association since the last 2 years became aware of Kwadjo and his family’s situation and has been supporting them ever since.
Beginning of this year Kwadjo’s mother was given an amount of ¢800.00 Cedis to invest in her small trading business in other to earn some extra money to support her son. The business has been going well until Madam Charlotte Afriyie, Kwadjo’s mother, was recently diagnosed of “Stroke” illness. She is currently unable to move and is under rehabilitation.
Kwadjo now depends on neighbours to get to school and has practically no one to give him the attention and support during school hours for session such as using the toilet as his mother did. LoszuGhana is still in contact with Kwadjo’s family and working with them to get other alternative ways to support him and his family.
Computer Lab and Library
The computer lab and Library facility is at the verge of completion. Until now are computers installed and library furniture including shelves all in place. The next and final stages will be the supply of books and painting of the entire building. The computer/library project has taken fairly longer time to complete due to reason pertaining to shortage of funding and delays in services.
However, the computer lab section of the facility is already in use both by the Old Adwampong school and the kids at the village. We are hopeful and certain that the entire project will be completed finally in the next 3 months.
Farming
We are hopeful of a huge harvest this year. Our cultivated maize is entering the maturity period and soon we will harvest them. We plan to grow more before the raining season ends. If all works out, we will have maize twice this year. This applies to both the 2 farmlands we have invested into this year.Behind our wall is our new maize farm. Both mothers and other supporting stuff work in the farm. They planted the maize and have been controlling the weeds and its development by themselves. Until now is mainly maize and vegetables (cocoyam) grown on the farmlands.
We have acquired sufficient experience and knowledge from this year’s farming and plan to improve our methods and techniques for the next farming season and produce more until we reach our aim of being “self-sufficient”.
SMW goes Commercial
Sunday Morning Woman (SMW), a pilot based project started by LoszuGhana to help young teenage mothers learn a vocation for their socio-economic development has made some tremendous progress since it started last year. Until now the young ladies have been able to test the commercial market with some of their products. They have sold samples of their baked bread and cookies in the surrounding villages which really attracted a lot of attention.
People who took the chance to buy and try the product were very impressed with the performance of the young ladies within a short training period. These group of young ladies wish to perfect their skills and learn further about strategic planning and how to manage their business. LoszuGhana has plans to invite experts on our next public education program to help the young mother on the topic of business management.
Five new girls join us
Five new girls joined our Children Village community in the first quarter of this year. We are happy to announce that the kids have fully acclimatized and integrated into our village community. Vanessa (6), Beatrice (11), Constance (2), Revella (4) and Abigail (7) have been enrolled in school and are doing very well. They are under the care of new foster mother Eno Mary who is giving the needed care and attention from her experience according to our caregiving values and norms. In total, we are currently taking care for 16 resident children at the children’s village project with kids from the teenage mothers from our SMW- Project inclusive and we are also caring for 6 other needy children living outside out compound.
Poor road to school
The rain season is on, currently the rains are expected every second day. However, for a small village like Old Adwampong and its location, commuting can a big problem is such periods due to poor road. This has adversely affect the Old Adwapong Community School as they depend on public transport for shuttle services.Presently kids are unable to arrive at school on time due to long waiting hoursfor transport service. Sometimes the teachers have to carry the very small ones and the little-bit older ones walk along in other to reach school. The same applies after school closes later in the afternoon.
This has been a major problem for the school for a while now and we are working with the local assembly and sponsors to discover long term solution and ways of dealing with this problem.