Teach a man to fish…you feed him for life…

We came to Ghana with the mission of teaching business development classes, mentoring, consulting, and providing micro-loans. Chloee and I are teaching partners and Nate and Maddie are partners. Chloe and I teach in Abomosu and Sankubenase while Nate and Maddie teach in Akokom and Asunafo (as well as a private class for four students from Kwabeng). This takes up most of our time.

 

When we first arrived in Abomosu we went around the villages meeting our current loan recipients. We assessed their needs and provided consulting and mentoring to them. We also took each of their pictures so we could create a profile database on each loanee. We constantly heard how grateful the people were for the loans given and how much it has helped improve their lives.

 

 

Spending some time getting to know one of the current loan recipients.

 

 

We each taught two classes a week in the respective towns listed above. We taught a Tuesday/Thursday class in one town and a Wednesday/Friday class in the other. We had Stephen Abu, Sr. (dad) and Nkansah interpret for us. Early into the class we had David Tetteh translate as well. He has definitely been the best student in the classes Chloee and I teach.

 

We took the lesson plans developed by previous interns and adapted them to our classes. We set up the classes in a way which allowed for constant interaction and role-playing of real life examples. We broke them into teams to practice principle we were teaching and each night the students were assigned homework. Each class was designed to teach a section of what would be required in a simplified business plan. By the end of the class they had developed their entire business plan specific to their business.

 

We found some major challenges early on. A majority of the people are illiterate and do not speak English. We are very blessed to have great translators committed to the program to help us. They really struggled doing math as well. Paying themselves a salary is a foreign concept. People also live on GMT (Ghana Maybe Time). We were lucky to have people show up by halfway through the class. We started to extend the classes a half hour to an hour because most people showed up late. Despite the challenges, the people have been very excited to be there. They have a desire to better their lives and they work hard to learn things which are completely foreign. We really hope to improve their lives in even the smallest ways. We hope that we can instill upon them an understanding of their potential. We want them to become self-sufficient and rich. My favorite parts of class were when they were teaching each other and answering each others questions. It is when they could do that I felt we had done a good job.

 

The next step is providing the loans and deciding who is not going to qualify. We have the privilege to have full autonomy in deciding who we give loans to. We have to be careful not to be too subjective. Currently we have over a 95% collection rate in Ghana and we want to keep that number as high as possible.

 

 

Lesson preparations

 

Taking in the Orange Fanta…keeping the minds well rested and ready!

 

Students calculating margins together.

 

David Tetteh (our translator and best friend) talking to the class.

 

Edward, one of our students in Abomosu, trying to be the first to figure out gross margin. The winner would get “toffee” (candy) and a large case of water sachets.

 

Lydia ended up being the winner and was quite pleased with herself. They LOVE praise, even a big round of applause and cheers of excitement got them going. They LOVED to be rewarded with candy too.

 

Our Abomosu Class (We are obviously pretty easy to spot)

 

The church where we taught in Sankubenase

 

Group breakouts

 

Chloee teaching (with about half our class missing or late)

 

Chloee and I worked great together teaching.

 

 

Chloee spending time with David working on his business plan.

 

Sankubenase

 

Creating student profiles

 

Group breakouts – teaching each other.

 

Sankubenase class picture.

 

 

More teaching…

 

 

Nate and I switched teaching one night and I went with Maddie to Akokom. They teach earlier in the day in a school (in large part because there is no power). It is an hour journey across a river in a canoe and through the bus just to get there.

Everyone was at least 30 minutes late (welcome to Ghana Time!)

 

 

 

Nkansah is our loan collector. We went with him to make a month’s worth of deposits in our bank at Kwabeng. It is the Atiwa Rural Bank. Nkansah was SO nervous carrying around all that cash in his pockets.