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Sports People that Care Update
The Ghana National Football Association,
the Liberty Team and the Heart
of Oaks conformed their full support and
commitment for Sports People that Care,
which has moved up to August 2004. Proceeds will go
to support Pro-link an NGO focused
on AIDS relief services. The Village Culture
Kingdom, a local NGO that promotes local
music, art and healing performed for the OVF team
at a recent preparatory event. We are collaborating
with them on a CD that will be used to promote the
Sports People that Care event.
Download a summary of Sports People
that Care in Word: Summary
l Full Word
Document l
Holistic ICT Plan for Community Development
in Ghana
Youth from the CatchITYoung Program
as well and teachers and others, gathered for a seminar
on ICT and community development. The objective was
to gain a first hand understanding of what’s
needed in the community, what the challenges are for
the universities and the building blocks we need to
bridge the digital divide. The local university in
Winneba is going to prepare a proposal to collaborate
with OVF in a short time. We have gained further momentum
and support from the community. OVF gained full commitment
from all participants towards building solutions including
the vice chancellor of the university of education
in Winneba. Through the university ICT center,
OVF will implement the Holistic ICT Program
through human capacity building, training
and outreach at the grassroots level community through
projects such as the Rural Village Farmer
Cooperative (oneVillage Ghana Unity Center)
as well as through computer training via the CatchITYoung
program, which is being applied at all educational
levels.
Download a summary of CatchITYoung:
Summary
l Full Word Document
l
Rural Village Farmer Cooperative
The local farmers in Jukwa have organized
themselves identifying ways to improve the productivity
of their farms and to develop the skills so that they
can move towards organic farming. Kafui
and Godfred Prebbie of OVF Ghana
have spent several years cultivating a relationship
with the locals in Jukwa. This process has included
the purchase of land with a house on it, which will
be the coordinating point for the development of a
Unity Center in Jukwa.
One problem is that labor is scarce and so farmers
have to use chemicals and pesticides to stay in business.
We are looking at how our Eco-partners
can help to improve making organic farmer more viable
in Jukwa. The cooperative has come up with an eight
year proposal for their farming management that they
recently submitted to the local government, which
included a request for tractor. We gratefully
thank “Grandma Helen” for her contribution
as it will help the cooperative get the tractor from
the local government. The most wonderful
thing about the visit to the rural farmers' collaboratives
Joy says was the hospitality, graciousness and generosity
of the local people as "they treated us a local
dinner under the stars in their community."
The land in Jukwa is still abundant
and productive as in many parts of Africa despite
mismanagement, which is partly due to unsuitable farming
practices imposed on Africa by Western authorities.
Another problem we want to address is the adoption
of unhealthy Western eating habits as this is leading
to health problems. Joy has observed ironically that
Burkina Faso a country that is significantly
lower on the income scale than Ghana appears to have
more healthy people.
Ecotourism
The farmer’s cooperative is located
in the town of Jukwa which is strategically
located on ecotourism route. The
trip to Jukwa takes one along the beautiful coastline.
Once in Jukwa its only 40 minutes from the Cape
Coast Castle, a historic site and 15 minutes
from the national park. Cape coast is a castle built
during colonial times and used as a transit point
for the sale of sale of slaves. We are working with
the University of Cape Coast and members of the Cape
Coast community to further collaborate to develop
ecotourism in that region.
Download a proposal for
OVF's Ghana Ecotourism Project
Cape Coast CatchITYoung Learning Center
One stop on the trip to Cape Coast involved a visit
to a local school. The OVF team gave the children
pencil and notebooks for them to write and draw and
the children reciprocated creating drawings and paintings
that depicted the history of their ancestors. Our
goal is to include these illustrations in a children’s
storybook, the proceeds of which will go
towards building the Cape Coast Castle Library
which will also double as a CatchITYoung Learning
Center.
Border ICT and Educational
Center
One of the greatest challenges of
the trip was the traveling, particularly at checkpoints
where many people have to pay bribes to get across
the border and also have to deal with bandits and
other forms of harassment. Border checkpoints funnel
all the traffic between neighboring nations and so
desperate people congregate there in search of resources.
This exposes many issues such as the desperate need
for adequate health care, nutrition and education.
The things we take for granted in affluent societies
like books, Internet and a host of educational and
information tools are not readily available for many
people in the non-consuming nations. Central to our
mission is the development of a community-based communications
and educational infrastructure that maximizes the
tremendous human potential that exists in every human
on this planet. On a practical level, we have identified
a site between the border of Ghana and Burkina Faso
to ICT to that community. Our proposal for a Peace
and Healing Center there was inspired by
the impassioned plea of a young man by the name of
Robert Teviu. Robert not only returned
from the capital city Accra to his hometown with a
knowledge of computers but with a passion and commitment
to his community and his people: “Try me. I
only ask you to give me a chance. Give me a computer
and I will train my people with the skills I have.
I will not let you down.”
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