Love brought me to Ghana - A British lady's experience of Ghana

[Music] I think it's the people um I've done some volunteer work in a few different a mainly Asian countries which were also fabulous and really really nice um but here I think especially there's no the language barrier isn't a problem so you really get to understand the local community and really everybody's very very welcoming so you sort of just feel part of um a place very quickly so um yeah I just felt at home really fast here so that was one of the reasons I wanted to come [Music] back my name's KY Emerson first I came to do some initial volunteering with another organization um in 2014 it's about nearly 10 years ago um I we were building uh School librar and um some homes for um people up in the north of Garner as well so I came for about 3 weeks with a friend to do some volunteering and then loved it and uh wanted to continue doing some charity work out here and then um Richard was working for that organization at the time and um we stayed in contact as friends and then I decided to come back out to see what kind of work I could do here voluntarily and um and then we ended up having a relationship and and um and then I moved out here in August [Music] 2015 I think some were a bit surprised but um my mom did a lot of traveling in her 20s around Africa so um I think she kind of got it from and she lived in Egypt for a year and stuff and so I think she was like oh okay I can see the peel and um then when she came out for a visit she was like oh I can really understand why you've fallen in love with this country um but yeah I mean everyone's been very welcoming obviously they're sad that I don't live in the UK anymore and they don't see me as often um that's probably the the trickiest part but other than that they're really happy for me [Music] so yeah I mean everywhere has challenges right um yeah I mean it's not the easiest country to live in but then where is so um but yeah no I I um I think here you sort of take every day as it comes it's not kind of like planning years ahead you sort of just see what what happens on that day so um yeah no and then I just really wanted to like do something in Ghana to give back and help the Next Generation so that's when we sort of decided to set up the charity [Music] well we when I we were doing the mobile library with this other organization building um uh not mobile sorry and building libraries in uncompleted school buildings we realized that it was like great giving the books to kids but if they can't read the story what's the point in a way they can just look at the pictures but they can't read and we actually realized that there's actually a big need for teaching how to read properly um so we started just initially as a kind of hobby a little project um working in one school with 14 teenage girls um and it just grew suddenly within like two weeks the teachers were like oh can we have another four pupils come in can we have this and suddenly by the end of that term we had taught about 30 to 40 kids how to read teenagers so they were like 13 14 year olds who some of them didn't even know the alphabet but they were in school every day um and then so then we got started getting calls from other schools and it just sort of Grew From that um but yeah it's been a journey it's uh I think we would we would have loved to it to have grown bigger than it is and nearly every day I'm receiving emails from schools saying please can you come and help please can you come and help and um it's still just me working voluntarily for the organization and Richard working full-time for or part-time for it so um yeah yeah it's it's we're doing as much as we can I would [Music] say I think it's it's very very rewarding obviously not MoneyWise but just in the sense that you see a you actually see a child transformed from somebody who is very withdrawn very quiet probably sits at the back of the class never speaks um to somebody who is engaged in the class they're they to have friends they start to smile and um I remember one story where a teacher said to me oh um I gave a a student a hug today and I was like she's like guess which student and I um I guess right but it was because she for the first time she got up and attempted to read something off the board and the teacher said wow she's got beautiful smile and teeth and she'd never seen her talk before you know so it's those kind of things that make a difference and um we're not you know we're working with teenagers who they're not going to be the next doctor or the you know because they their abilities in other subjects are not high as well but they'll be able to fill in a form to apply for a job they'll be able to understand the medical things that for their child when in the future they'll be able to teach their children how to read and it will become a cycle that you know the future Generations it will get to the point where we won't even be needed that's that's our aim that you know if everyone is learned learn learns to read then what's the point of our organization so in a way that's the dream to close down in years to [Music] come it's difficult um mainly just friends and family um we apply for some grants when we can um we're registered in Ghana but not in the UK so that limits us on finding um Grant applications un fortunately um mainly yeah I mean when we started it was coming from our pocket for a long time we had um a motorbike so we just go with books on our back and drive to the different schools with and um teach in the afternoons so yeah I mean it's it's the finance is the bit that's causing struggles and you know it would be amazing to um employ some other garans to come on board and to expand the projects and work in different regions and districts um but it's limited and then after Co everything got quite even more difficult with you know a lot of people saying actually we can't afford it to donate anymore and stuff like that so it's definitely not easy but I think that's the main problem with every charity they find funding quite difficult but uh yeah we we're ticking along should I say so yeah the dream is to expand and to do that but feasibility wise it's quite limited with what we have [Music] capacity so the the schools generally they hear about us from another school teacher or head teacher or maybe one of the students has moved to that school and suddenly they're like oh this kid knows how to read well and where did they learn this and so um we're actually getting calls all the time both from government schools and private schools you know I had one this morning from a private school in Acra and they're saying please like we have issues with reading can you come so we have the there's the need there but there's only two of us and you know um but what we do is we work with the Ghana Education Service so um they we generally say what school is needed needs the help the most and they provide like a list or a district that we should work in so um we feel like we want them to give us the the places that need it the most and we will go there so but yeah and I think it's mostly the remot areas it it is but it was funny because when we started the organization we worked in a very inner city school thinking oh we'll just work here and we've only just started this project so maybe there'll be about four or five kids and that's when suddenly there was this 20 of and then so actually there's a lot of schools that need it and um the problem with the inner city schools is a lot lot of the kids are not from there they're often from The Villages and their parents have sent them to work to to live in the inner city in return for work so what happens is they go to school in the daytime after school they'll quickly change and that you'll be seeing them selling water on the streets so actually the inner ones City ones are the ones that we have the most difficulty with because they're often staying with somebody who isn't their parent or family member they're for in their mind they are there to work so when we go and say oh like please can they stay an extra hour after school for our project and teaching is difficult so um whereas in the in the Villages they have other struggles maybe the electricity is not there for them to do their homework and things like that but they're around their family a lot so it's actually easier to work with [Music] them H donate um yeah I mean do you know what it's it's I don't and I don't blame people who do donate to Charities that when you see something that's physical it's very easy to donate and you feel like okay I've seen this grow I've built a library or you know I'm building a school or a toilet block or something and you see okay that's that's it with our project it's very much we need the people on board to come and teach and grow that the literacy side of it and it's quite hard to kind of get people to understand that to see the growth of if we teach this child look at the future of that child um so yeah I mean I what we're looking what we need is financial donations so that we can take on a couple more workers and try and expand the project that way um and find it sustainable because I wouldn't want to bring somebody on and then 5 months down the line I can't pay them anymore you know um so ideally what we're looking for is UK sponsors or companies who want to say okay we'll do a monthly donation of excellent amount and um and then we can say well look we've taught X number of students from your money how to read they were literate before and now look at their future um so yeah yeah donations and then we sometimes get people donating books as well so um we get um so we run a mobile Library so we have book collect books for that and also we have some schools where they have um rooms that need need books in them so they've got like a a space for a library but they don't have any books so we try and collect books for them too um but then the problem with that is you have to get the books from say the UK or the US and and then Finance getting it here as well so that isn't easy either yeah you can set up a a monthly donation or a one-off donation through the website um and also since it's just me and Richard um anyone can contact us by email by social media Instagram and it will be one of us that replies so um they can have a personal message and you know if someone says I really want to donate this amount but it needs to go for this then that's Al totally [Music] fine what isn't to like uh I think it's just a very laid-back way of life um I was working a very City type job in London um used which you kind of you know you look forward to the weekend by the weekend you're so tired that you don't do anything and um here it's just much more laidback and people are people see you as family if you're not part of their family you know um I I often feel shocked when I see like I don't know say a car's broken down and you see 10 different people running to help that person if that was in London they'll just drive straight Ro you know so there's this kind of real Community spirit that I think um you don't get in many places so yeah that's probably one of the main things I love about [Music] it's rolling now okay yeah you happy to start yeah yeah yeah how are you doing today yeah good very good very hot it's hot isn't it it's so hot so you when you are in UK it's like a I can't wait to get to a place then you come here and it's like oh it takes your it takes your body like a few days to adjust to here and then when I go back to the UK as well I'm shivering for a few days so it's it's funny how your body has to to it