the news is in...this summer I will be working on the Rural Enteprises Project (REP) in either the Northern Region or the Upper East Region. I was thrilled to learn that this was my placement, and another exciting aspect of it is that my coach for the summer (a longterm volunteer with EWB) is Gwen Henderson, an amazing women that I met briefly at the National Conference in Montreal this past January. She has been working in Ghana since the summer of 2006. She has learned a great deal about REP and has been immersing herself in Ghanian culture so I am sure I she will be a great example to follow and an amazing resource and support.
Here is a quick intro to the REP in Ghana:
The Rural Enterprises Project (REP) is a poverty alleviation organization in Ghana that supports the creation and growth of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in the rural regions of Northern Ghana. I will likely be working in an office that is responsible for coordinating training services, credit services and business counseling for women and underemployed youth in the rural districts of the Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions of Ghana.
What will my role be?
I will likely be working in a Business Advisory Centre, counselling micro enterprise owners in the local rural areas, and assisting in running training programs for micro and small scale enterprises owners in the local rural areas. This can be accomplished through participation and planning of workshops, working as a team with local staff, and contributing to the work of REP in a way that enhances their own work. EWB's involvement with REP has moved beyond the monitoring and evaluation stage and now the goal is to encourage our REP coworkers to put the learnings from the trainings they received, to get the clients to come up with their own ideas (possibilities of improvement), and to help them make them a reality.
Am I excited!?!
Of course! Its very exciting and relieving to learn what my placement is, it just makes it that much more real. I am still waiting on details of my exact location and will be arranging a conference call with Gwen in the next week.
The description of REPs gives me shivers. One of the reasons I felt so moved by rural poverty was because of the toll it takes on women. Born a fighter for women's rights, this struck a deep chord in me. I am passionately moved to be working on a project that will directly benefit women who are rural subsistence farmers and suffer the worst. From a link found below on the right discussing rural poverty, one of the funders of the REP, IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development)
"Women are among the worst affected. More than half of women who are heads of households in rural areas are among the poorest 20 per cent of the population – the poorest of the poor. Women bear heavy workloads. They are responsible for 55 to 60 per cent of agricultural production. Women work at least twice as many hours as men, spend about three times as many hours transporting water and goods, and transport about four times as much in volume. Yet they are much less likely than men to receive education or health benefits or have a voice in decisions affecting their lives. For them, poverty means high numbers of infant deaths, undernourished families, lack of education for children and other deprivations."
REP is a project that I feel I can contribute to. A lot of the projects EWB is involved with involve knowledge of agriculture, which I am limited in. I will have the opportunity to learn about rural livelihoods and agriculture, without pretending to know more about it than I actually do. I am eager to learn more about the project and similar ones to it around the world. Those findings will come shortly.
Just a month before I go! I took my first malaria medication today (because I am want to make sure I don't have negative side effects with Larium, and want to take it soon enough to switch to Doxycycline if I need to.)
Can't Wait!
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