Volunteers help plight of poor in Ghana
In a series of exclusive articles, features editor Lily Canter reports on her trip to a remote part of Ghana with a Northampton charity.
Where your next meal will come from or whether you will survive another bout of malaria is not something people in Northamptonshire have to worry about but it is the startling reality facing millions of people in Ghana.
This daily struggle is a haunting childhood memory for six Ghanians who grew up in the most remote part of the country before managing to leave for a better life due to their valuable education.
But instead of turning their back on the deprived upper west region of Ghana, the friends have teamed together to create a charity to support and develop their home towns and villages.
The Foundation for Rural Education, Empowerment and Development (FREED) now has 40 members across the globe and an umbrella group FREED UK has been set up in Northampton.
Its founder member is Dery Tuopar, a dental surgeon from Northampton General Hospital, who is originally from Ko an isolated village, a few miles along a bumpy, dirt track from the town of Nandom, in the furthest northern corner of Ghana.
During the last three years Mr Tuopar has been travelling to his home town with dental colleagues from Northamptonshire trying to improve standards at the dilapidated Nandom Hospital.
This year 21 volunteers- many of them from Northamptonshire- joined him, to start projects at the hospital, local schools and orphanage.Three of these volunteers included Ambrose Ire, Dominic Hooko and Luke Anglaaere, who along with Mr Tuopar all come from the Nandom area.
One of FREED UK's objectives was to begin work on the hospital kitchen, a 7,000 project supported by a Chronicle & Echo fundraising appeal.
Currently patients are only fed if their families camp out in the hospital grounds with food from their farms and cook it on the ground.
Mr Tuopar, who has only travelled with four volunteers before, was delighted with the success of this autumn's large scale operation, which helped to set up a school library, distribute drugs and equipment at the hospital, create a dental suite and train staff, plus take clothing and food to the orphanage.
He said: "It has been over and above my expectations. It has been the first time we have been able to offer the community some leadership and the people are motivated.
"The feedback from the population was immense. The impact has been sky high."
The origins of FREED began eight years ago, when Mr Tuopar contacted some old school friends to help raise money for their former Ghanian school. Having seen how much the education system had declined since their own school days the six friends, many of whom had left Ghana to start a life outside Africa, set up the charity to try to raise standards in the region which has been neglected by the Government.
The capital city Accra is based in the south of the country on the coast and this is where most development money is spent, including much of the Education Trust Fund set up when Ghana gained independence from the British 50 years ago. The money was earmarked for northern Ghana to bring it up to the standards of the south, but unfortunately political will meant this did not happen.
The northern west region is still largely ignored by the Government today and there is very little infrastructure, with most of the roads being nothing more than sandy tracks and buildings made out of mud and wood. The area is also incredibly dry with yellow crops of maize and peanuts, finding it difficult to survive in the harsh conditions and freak floods earlier in October completely wiped out large harvests.
At the Sunday food market the lack of food was apparent with dozens of stalls selling the same things- dry fish, tomatoes, okra and maize.
Meanwhile our 600 mile trip from Accra to Nandom, took three days, due to the poor state of the roads and lack of asphalt surfaces.
Hipolyte Pul, is another founder member of FREED, who now works as director of catholic relief services in Ghana.
He said the main aims of the organisation were to improve the education and health of people in Nandom and the surrounding area- a population of about 30,000 people.
Meeting the team of Northamptonshire volunteers in Nandom, he said: "The members of FREED have found a way of reinvesting ourselves into the area. People here have just got their brains and their hands.
Dery and I don't have to worry about what we will eat tomorrow because we went to school and were educated. If we can't transform the lives of people through education we might as well stop now. We are where we are because we went to school."
"The infrastructure in this area- the hospitals and schools, were all built by the Catholic missionaries. The Government hardly touches this part of the country."
Through their skills as professionals, the members of FREED are slowly making changes in the area.
A radio station has been set up in Nandom which not only plays music but gives public health messages, broadcasts education lessons, and keeps people informed of funerals, so messengers do not have to cycle hundreds of miles to inform all the villages.
A library has also been set up in Nandom and FREED UK have provided a toilet block for Ko school.
But one of the biggest difficulties for the FREED founder members is saying no to people in the community where they grew up.
Mr Tuopar explained: "When I first moved away from here I didn't come back for five years. I just couldn't. The last time I come with 3,000 of my own money and spent it all but it is not sustainable."
Many of the population see Mr Tuopar as the answer to all of their problems and place all their worries on him. During our first day in Nandom, an elderly lady approached Mr Tuopar in the church and told him about her cataract, believing the dental surgeon would be able to help her.
"That is what I get all of the time," he said sadly.
But with the latest excursion to Ghana FREED UK feels like it has started to make some milestones in the community, rather than simply distributing goods.
Anne Hicks, is a clinical nurse specialist at Northampton General Hospital maxillofacial unit, who has supported Mr Tuopar in setting up FREED UK during the past three years.
She was particularly pleased with the way local families volunteered their time to help start work on the hospital kitchen, which is now well underway thanks to 4,000 raised by Chron readers.
She said: "The trip has been absolutely, 100 per cent a resounding success.
"Now the community can see things changing and how we keep coming back and the apathy has gone. We have left the community with a sense of hope for the future.
"We asked for local people to come and help start making the bricks and preparing the foundations and too many people turned up. It was fantastic. "What was also incidental but remarkable was the way the muslim community came down because some of our UK group had visited them in the mosque earlier in the week. That community has always been isolated and not integrated. That was really special."
She added: "We had a group of more than 20 people that have travelled together day and night and it could have been extremely difficult but is hasn't been. That is a measure of everyone's commitment."
*In tomorrow's Chron read about what the Northamptonshire volunteers faced when they visited the orphange.
The volunteers:
Dery Tuopar- dental surgeon
Andrew Camilleri- oral and maxillofacial surgeon
Ambrose Ire- dentist
Anne Hicks- clinical nurse specialist
Mark Dayman- cabinet maker
Christine De Manuel- primary school teacher
Jenny Howlett- primary school teacher
Glenda Singlehurst- maxillofacial nurse
Kim Faulkner- maxillofacial nurse
John Gregory- football coach
Lilian Crane- special needs teacher
Gai McKenzie- maxillofacial nurse
Azra Khan- biomedical scientist
Clare Tyers- dental surgeon
Sukhi Hans - dental surgeon
Nadia Amin- dental surgeon
Peter and Beryl Beynon- retired doctors
Margaret Wells- retired swimming coach
Luke Anglaaere- Ghana forestry commission
Dominic Hooko- surveyor
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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