The LIFE Project Unloaded

Hello from Sandema! Cohort 14, the project well on its way to sustainable greatness, is officially half way through its time in Ghana. The weeks are flying in but we have achieved a tremendous amount. We run an inclusive girls club in a rural community called Wiaga. This club focuses on many issues that impact young girls around the world. So far we have covered puberty, sexual health, disability awareness and female genital mutilation. Our purpose is not only to plan these sessions but to find and integrate girls with disabilities in them. This project is crucial to our development mission but the lack of girls with disabilities living in Wiaga has prevented us from integrating them into the club. In order to make this project sustainable we aim to train local Ghanaian women and provide them with a curriculum to ensure the continuation of girls club sessions without the future assistance of International Service.

The team has also revived Sandema’s girls club, a massive success! Its first session saw over 100 girls pile in, two of which were girls with disabilities and another two who were young carers. We hope to run interviews to find a girls club president in the next week and institute sustainability from the offset. We have also started an inclusive ICT club in Sandema, which is co- run by LIFE team members and Daniel and Paul two members of Sandema’s Disabled People’s Organisation (DPO). The ICT club has been a triumph for cohort 14. People with disabilities have been involved at every stage, from the planning to the presenting. Moreover, our first session attracted a number of children with disabilities making it a fully integrated program.

Further, we have run two extremely powerful senior high school sensitisations, which raise awareness of disability, its causes and its impact. The first sensitisation was wicked! We took a PA system and a DJ (the BEST decision we have made), Ghanaians love to dance and senior high school students are no exception to the rule. We had Mr Bob a Wiaga DPO member do a question and answer section and tell the students his story as a person with a disability. Whilst in general the students had positive attitudes to disability, they were utterly shocked that people with disabilities could do the same as people without and sometimes more. This speech had a very strong impact on the students and challenged their pre-conceived ideas of disability.

Our second sensitisation was completely different but equally successful. It was beautifully chaotic- we presented to over 1000 students which led to a very interactive delivery. Our session was accompanied by the school’s cultural group, which was a fantastic experience. Sadly, ‘dumsor’ (lights out) occurred half way through our sensitisation and prevented us from continuing due to the large audience. However, the aspects we did cover had an immediate impact, educating the students on the definitions of disability and its causes.

It has been a very busy 6 weeks for the LIFE team and the pace is ever increasing! We will have a number of exciting developments to share in the upcoming weeks.