Africa
Asiakwa project UPDATE 2023
Hamida and Fred recently visited the school and met with Samuel to discuss progress. Hamida writes:
We were invited to attend a Parents-Teachers meeting,to give us the opportunity to meet the parents, especially parents of SA scholarship kids.
After the meeting, we had a short talk with SA scholarship pupils and their parents and also took group pictures with them.
Two of the pupils are in the final year of the Junior High School (JHS) and preparing for entrance exams into the Senior High School (SHS) and another 2 in the penultimate year.
The 2 final year students enjoy Mathematics and science and wish to continue on the SHS science route. One has the ambition to become a nurse or medical doctor; the other wishes to be a police officer. It is encouraging that these children have the ambition to aim high. This is a benefit of SA support in Asiakwa.
We shall continue to follow the progress of these pupils. We feel encouraged to recommend that SA continues to support pupils of this school.
Some issues arose which the school is now facing. Hamida was impressed with ‘the depth of cooperation
from the parents to ensure the school survives’, and detailed some of the key challenges faced at the moment:
- Lack of electricity – this means the bore-hole pump doesn’t work, computers and office equipment can’t be used and there is no lighting or ventilation fans for the classrooms.
- Difficulty retaining teachers, due to low wages and lack of local infrastructure to support the role.
- Lack of a solid foundation for the wooden extension (housing 4 classrooms for upper primary classes and the Junior high school) makes it unstable in during heavy raining season.
- Difficulty providing mandatory textbooks, the Government having failed to supply these.
The community works tirelessly to address issues as they arise, and are now seeking to raise funds for Solar panels. See our next Newsletter for updates on this project, or click here to support now.
Asiakwa project UPDATE 2021
In our Christmas 2020 Newsletter we wrote:
We have just had a long Zoom talk with Fred and Hamida who have told us that the lockdown eased in Ghana enough for them to visit our Community Centre school in early September. They met our headmaster and gave him the ‘Star’ they had made for the school entrance. Under the Star will be the words “This building was donated by Star Action for the benefit of the Asiakwa Community.”
During the summer, the school was able to open for the final year primary pupils to take their exams. Now more pupils are returning for this term and first year new pupils started after half term.
Thanks to your additional support following our June Newsletter, Star Action has been able to commit our continued support of pupils whose parents are unable to afford any fees. (We were able to increase the number to ten and also pay for uniforms and school lunches.) We are now hoping to have additional funding for two more pupils.
Previously in our Lockdown News-flash in June last year, we had told you that the school had been closed for a while due to the Corona Virus, but we reported that the Headmaster is very grateful for Star Action’s support, and has sent a detailed report, extracts from which will be in our full News-letter. He is very much hoping we can continue our sponsorship of the ten very poor children in the school, and he would love us to help more!
He writes:
I want to express gratitude on behalf of their parents. Most are single who have lost their partner and things are very hard for them. By the help of Star Action these children are in school. It is my fervent prayer that Star Action will be able to assist us with the fees of other children who cannot pay.
While the school has been closed, he has been using our land to grow maize ready to help with the school lunches.
So, our dear friends – we do thank you for all your support. If you feel moved to send a little something extra at this Corona time, it will be most welcome and be put to good use for our vital work.
Thanks to a wonderfully generous supporter, the really good news is that we have been able to purchase a school bus, (second hand but in good condition) to bring children from their homes to the school when it is too far to walk.
July 2019 – Hamida reports on her recent visit with Fred…
We visited the school recently. Had the opportunity to meet teachers and the pupils, including the “Star Action” pupils on school scholarship.
The building is now being actively used. The main hall has been partitioned into classrooms. As at the time of our visit, only 2 of the scholarship pupils have the school uniform; we made immediate payment to facilitate this. It has since been reported that they all now have their uniform.
And also sends the following words from Samuel Asamoah, the Headmaster of the school:
Benefit from star action: It is exactly a year now when star action did us a great favour by handing their building which is located at Asiakwa to the Christian preparatory school which was at that time struggling to have good structure for the school. At that time the education service was on our neck to put the place in order; also due to the poor structure of our previous venue we were having very low enrollment.
As of now nine needy children in the town have also been given scholarship to study in the school and have received Star Action assistance for school uniform school lunch. The population of the school which was about 90 children has also increase to 120 within 1year; and we are still counting. At our new premises, the problem of water flooding during rainfall has become a thing of the past. And we now have very spacious environment for the children. We are much grateful to Star Action.
HISTORY OF OUR WORK IN ASIAKWA
The next step in equipping our centre has been held up for various reasons, including illness of our Star Action helpers in Asiakwa. We have also been trying to gain external funding for the computer equipment, without success yet. Please hold this whole project in your thoughts. Thanks to a generous gift from a UK supporter, we are hoping the internal electrical wiring will be completed soon and the generator up and running.
ASIAKWA UPDATE
It was such a wonderful surprise to see the progress with our Community Centre building. I had not expected it would all look so good. It had been five years since my previous visit, when we had been shown an overgrown piece of land outside the little town of Asiakwa which the local Chief was willing to give us for the building of a Community Training Centre for young people in the area. The original plan had been to provide training for teenagers in various different skills, but it had become apparent that the great need was for training in computer and IT and so this is now the focus of the project.
During our visit we had a meeting with the Star Action project team and were very inspired with their dedication and commitment. So much work had been done voluntarily by this group. The building is beautifully designed and soundly constructed, and I was really thrilled to see it looking so much more complete than I had expected. Also exciting was the way in which the grounds around the building have been so carefully tended and are now growing crops. (When we had seen it originally the whole area was completely overgrown. This had been cleared and looks very loved and in good order.) It is currently overseen and looked after by a lovely caretaker family who live in one small area of the building. This means it is kept secure while we await the funding for the next stage which is the equipping with everything needed for it to be an IT Training Centre.
During our visit the water supply was connected and we will go ahead with the electricity connection as soon as we have the sponsorship for the computer and IT equipment. This is the next step in our project. We are approaching various companies who we hope will donate for this very worthwhile community project.
The Ghana Government Education Dept. are encouraging us to proceed because there has been much disruption in the area due to the re-discovery of gold in the streams and valleys in and around Asiakwa. They are keen to stabilise the youth population by training many in careers that will sustain incomes in the long term. They see ICT as being one of these careers that will be in increasing demand in existing institutions which will expand in rapidly developing Ghana.
Asiakwa, Eastern Ghana
In October, Jenny and Stuart visited Ghana and spent time in the beautiful, but very poor, village of Asiakwa, in the Eastern Province. This has been identified by our Star Action agents in West Africa, Fred and Hamida Bote-Kwame, as an area much in need of support. It is also ideal, as we have reliable English speaking friends living there who are ‘on the spot’ to monitor the ongoing progress of projects. One of our Star Action principles is that we maintain ‘hands-on monitoring’ of every project by an honest, hardworking and reliable native born agent. (Many large NGOs—Charities— have not done this, so the large amounts of money donated sometimes get diverted and not used as and where intended. We saw this happening at first hand in Sri Lanka when we were there in the first months and years after the tsunami.)
As reported in our last Newsletter (May 2008) Star Action has been donated land for a community project at Asiakwa. So Jenny and Stuart’s first visit was to the ‘Cabinet of Chiefs’ where we were graciously received. The Paramount Chief of Asiakwa welcomed the proposal for Star Action support and confirmed the gift (actually like a lease, as all land is ‘owned’ by the Chief for the village) of a large piece of common land. Next we went to view the land, then attended a meeting with our local group of Star Action supporters. They have formed a committee and the chair of this, Mr. Alexco, will be our ‘hands on’ local agent.
About the Project … by Fred and Hamida
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Asiakwa is a small town in the Eastern Region of Ghana. It is situated on a mountain slope. The vegetation is very rich, and many foodstuffs grow in Asiakwa. The town is rich in beauty of nature, such as the beautiful hillside covered in lush green vegetation, and the stream that runs at the foot of the hill.
Asiakwa is a serene town and the energy is peaceful. However, Asiakwa is very much poor in the material sense. Many inhabitants live in mud houses with leaking roofs. Most houses have no pipe-borne water supply, relying on water from the stream (where they often wash themselves and also do their laundry). Local children attend school up to the compulsory lower secondary school level (age 14 years). Beyond that, most parents cannot afford to continue educating their children. Consequently, teenagers join parents in farming, some ‘roam about’ looking for manual labour, some go on to apprenticeship in trades such as dress-making/tailoring, catering, hairdressing, tie & dye (dyeing of local cloths), to name a few. Needless to say, teenage pregnancy is rife, and the attendant issues of sexually transmitted diseases and concern about HIV/AIDS.
For those who have trained in some trade, on completion of their training they go away to the big cities in search of a job, as the parents cannot afford to equip them to practice their trade. Similarly, for those who are lucky to be highly educated (e.g. through scholarships), there is a ‘brain drain’ to the big cities. Thus, the community is gradually being depleted of skilled workers. Signs of material poverty abound. In short, the town is slowly dying. These are our observations of Asiakwa. Some Of The Children From Asiakwa Village Who WIll Benefit From Our Project As They Grow Up
During our two week stay in the town, we had the opportunity of interaction and discussion with teenage children (14 years +) and with their parents. We discussed how best outside help can be utilised to alleviate the poverty in the community. Several options were considered, including scholarship for some young people to university level, sponsoring more young people in apprenticeship, to name a few. However, the issue of ‘brain drain’ from the community made these options unattractive to them.
New Project in Uganda
Beatrice, Achieng Nas is the Founder of The Pearl Community Foundation in Amor Village in Uganda. This is one of the most vulnerable communities in Tororo District, Uganda where every household is suffering from the aftermath of HIV and Aids. This Community is supporting 220 students, many of whom are total orphans. Others have parents living with HIV and a few are just from extremely poor homes.
Beatrice and her committee have begun farming around the Foundation Centre, particularly pineapples and mangoes. Since starting in 2014 they have only harvested two pineapple crops and one of mangoes because the land is open and the fruit has been taken by other poor villagers. This year Star Action has been able to fund the building of a tall fence around the land and the students are now confident of crops of fruit (value £500) and adding a chicken coop with up to 500 birds. Some of the students will operate the farm and both the experience and the yield will give them enthusiasm to expand further and copy the farm elsewhere around the villages.