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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. 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.
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.
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 (click here
for the latest update). 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.
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 the proposal for
OVF's Ghana Ecotourism Project in Word).
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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