Good work Ghana is a voluntary organisation in Ghana, set up by my brother.
Me and my (half) brother grew up together in Holland, but some time ago he, who is half Ghanaian, moved back to Ghana, and started living there with family in Kumasi. As you know there are thousands of (dutch) development-aid projects all over Ghana, most of them are ineffective, and offer not much more than a responsible holliday, and adventurous
experience in Ghana to young Europeans.
A few years ago my brother started a
project with not to high aims, or claiming to help change. But just offering a very great experience to young people who voluntarily make themselves useful in practical projects. Any real development work
should naturally aim to in time make itself unnecessary. And should help
local communities to start helping themselves (being self-sufficient for example).
Apart from other projects he build an orphanage in Kokobeng, near Kumasi. This orphanage is going to be
sustainable and self-sufficient (as much as possible). So it has
solar panels, and will be designed to be
energy efficient etc. it has a big piece of
land around where they plan to organically grow food (thus supplying food for the staff and kids but also being a learning ground for kids in how to support yourself, rather than being learnt how to get a job in the system at an on export and monoculture focussed big plantain for slave wages). Hearing about
permaculture from me he became interested. The problem is that i dont have time the coming years to go there, and i dont have any knowledge about the tropical climate and its ecology.
Right now the building is almost finished, and uilding is my brothers terrain, he lacks knowledge of food production and land management, and approaching the end of the building project the need for more knowledge on this is really reaquired.
So we are looking for (apart from financial donations) people who have knowledge about
permaculture in the tropics, and most specially in Ghana, and: who would like to help out in any way that could be possible. Even just knowing people in Ghana who know about
permaculture or other projects in the region, and could occasionally advise would help a lot. but hopefully you would like to be involved or helping out. What is needed actually is somebody with knowledge op
permaculture and tropical climates who would like to help (as a
volunteer) build a food providing safe area for the kids of this orphanage. some international funds occasionally help financing the travel costs for intenational volunteers...
The progress at the foster home can be followed here:
http://goodworkghana.org/UK-site.html click 'pics', then 'foster home', bottom left...
from there you can click trough to the rest of the site
