Pia W. is reporting

Our work - not just paying fees and giving out books

What I particularly liked about our work is that over time we get to know each individual student a bit better and establish some kind of relationship with them. Our work did not just consist of paying school fees and giving out the necessary books and utensils, but a much bigger part of the job also was looking after the well-being and performance of the students. This means that we occasionally visited the children and young adults at home and at school and talked to their teachers and parents and of course to the students themselves.

I was wonderful to watch how all students participating in the Junior Program thrive when practising their hobbies and how each individual student is able to show their strengths in a particular field. I regarded supporting students in practising their hobbies and interests as very important too, as this is what makes each individual student unique. These individual talents and skills can furthermore help to open up better prospects and new opportunities.

So many talents

A student called Maina for instance is a very gifted basketball player. Attending his matches was certainly one of the highlights during my volunteer service in Ghana. Maina and his team won numerous matches and were even able to compete in the championship finals at national level. Playing sports increases his chances to go to university and might even help him get a scholarship.

We also encouraged and supported another student, Lavielle, in those interests that might lead to professional training opportunities later on. Nicky, another volunteer, for instance helped her to further develop her drawing skills by a very wide range of different exercises and projects. In her free time Lavielle also writes about topics that are on her mind (street children, teenage pregnancies, drug abuse…), and then publishes the texts in a friend’s newspaper.

And finally the youngest children on the program should also be mentioned, whom we tried to support in their development outside school as much as possible by joint activities such as playing and painting.

Hafiz and Ilyiam - a personal highlight

One day Manaf, the leader of our project, told Nicky and me, that two of the children from our immediate neighbourhood are highly likely to move to the North of Ghana. The two are called Ilyiam (3 years old) and Hafiz (5 years old) and together with their mother Balira, their little brother Yussuf (5 months) and their grandmother live in a small room. Their grandmother works at the market and is the sole breadwinner for the whole family. In order to ease the burden on her, Balira considered sending her two oldest children to stay with relatives in the North, which is quite common in Ghana. For the bright Hafiz and his sister moving there would have brought a radical change to their personal circumstances and would have meant that there wasn’t any guarantee that they would get satisfactory schooling.

We discussed this in our team and informed the members of the management board of the organisation in Ghana and Germany. We got the reply on the next day, that Hafiz and Ilyiam had been accepted onto the Junior Program and that as a result their school fees as well the costs of buying books, notebooks and uniforms (…) would be covered by Aminu Initiative. We were all really happy about this outcome and in the end the initially very unfortunate situation turned into one of my best moments here.

You could see how Aminu Initiative and the donors together with the Ghanaian partner organisation can change an individual’s future and thus have a genuinely lasting effect.

Jule G. is reporting

In addition to the actual job we had to do, there were so many different kinds of exeriences we made - I am very grateful

I had been in Ghana for half a year meanwhile and could say with certainty, that during this time I had already had a lot of important experiences. It was the little everyday things, which defined my stay in Ghana - such as singing and playing with the children - as well as the bigger adventures - such as for instance trips and journeys. As Ghana is a very multi-facetted country, I also tried to discover as many aspects as possible. And the best way to accomplish this was of course by travelling.

While in Germany most families celebrated Christmas at home and enjoyed advent time, I travelled to the North of Ghana with the Ghanaian team and my fellow volunteers. We rented a trotro minibus and travelled from town to town with it. It is true that we spent endless hours on this very cramped car without air conditioning, but it was definitely worth it.

Our accommodation was usually in big and quite basic rooms with many beds or in small mud houses. But this is exactly what made it perfect and made us bond as a team even more. We had a look at the most different places, went for a swim next to amazingly beautiful waterfalls, went canoeing, watched how shea butter is produced and visited Ghana’s oldest mosque.

One of the things I liked best about our journey, however, were the safaris we went on in the Mole national park. We saw the most diverse range of animals in the wild there, ranging from crocodiles to monkeys and elephants.

I had never been as close to these kinds of wild animals before, not even in the zoo. We could see elephants spraying dust at each other and monkeys feeding their babies.

All of this are memories which I probably will never forget and I am incredibly grateful that I got the opportunity to volunteer with Aminu Initiative and its partner organisation here in Ghana.

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