Home Grown Support, and the first Graduate!

Farming is a major way of life in Ghana. It counts for the livelihoods of over 70% of the population in Ghana's Northern Region. Dan's has a farm just outside of Kpuliying where his family has been growing groundnuts (peanuts in North America) corn and rice since he can remember. This year he is just growing groundnuts because there was not enough money to plant any other crops. His farm and his students keep Dan making the 11 mile journey on his bicycle every day - or two at most.

The roads out to the village and Dan's farm will become much more difficult to travel as the rainy season gets underway

Dan was able to sew 6 acres of his 8 acre plot through some the support of friends and family and the help of a friend with a tractor.

Soon this field will be green with the soil nutrient restoring effects of the groundnut plants.

A farm is not just a source of income, it's a way of life, and in Ghana, you can't help but consider the daily, labour intesive demands of the farm on the rest of every day life. School terms are scheduled to break accoring to the seasons when children will be needed most on the farm. Families invest in the future in one of the few secure things they have here - the farm. This can mean having to buy inputs for the farm before paying for children to go to school. It's a lot of work, and the challenges of droughts, floods, pests, a rainy season that is no longer predicatble, and market prices increasingly influenced by external forces mean that what you have left in the end may not be a lot. But it's what Dan and his school have got to sustain themselves.

Small groundnut seedlings can already be seen sprouting up on Dan's farm

and the pests can already be found ready to munch on their leafy shoots.

Quite encouraginly, the Quality of Life for the Girl Child programme is on-going despite not having significantly attained any external funding outside of individual friends and family. It was hoped by now that the school could have grown in terms of learning aids and capacity for more students, but happily it is celebrating its first graduate! Shara is around 17 years old and she has been attending the Quality of Life for the Girl Child programme for 1 1/2 years now. During this time, when other children were happy to be out of class, Shara could be found with her books determined to do her best and learn as much as she could well into the evening. The beginning of the May 2008 term marked Shara's enrolment into the public Junior High School. After meeting with her father and the headmistress of the school, Dan arranged for Shara to join the other children at the JHS level. Upon review of Shara's performance, the headmistress belives that Shara will be able to pass more than one year of school this year, and join students closer to her age in the following year. JHS is free in Ghana, but Senior High School charges a tuition. This tuition can be covered by a scholarship in Ghana's Northern Region, but the families must pay for the first year of tuition before getting reimbursed by the government. This is often a difficult task, it seems there are always more challenges ahead.

Shara is the tallest girl in the centre of the photo with her classmates, she is now attending the first year of JHS in the public school.

Motivated by Shara's graduation, Dan is not worried about his programme, and the original aim and reason that were behind its inception are still compelling him to continue in his work. Progress will be made, and for the girls and boys enrolled that means more than a yearly report, that means opportunity.

Dr. Agrey, a Ghanaian Scholar in social studies, stated that before any country can meet its development agenda, that country must channel its resources, both human and materila, towards developing the girl-child. There are many studies which support this, but it is easy to see the central role that the matron of the home plays here, and to see the undeniable influence that she plays on the next generation. It is out of this logic that comes one of the greatest things we can do for all children is educating their future mothers. Thus the girl child is a major focus of the project, but the program goes beyond this and aims to reach vulnerable children who struggle to attain 3 daily meals.

With this belief, the management under the chairmanship of Dan, is appealing to benevolent organizations and other philantropic bodies to help him sew the seeds of knowledge in the students of Kpuliying.