Scottish Charity
Number
SC037488
Ordinary People Making Extraordinary Differences!
Our Projects
Our projects are concentrated in the remote and underdeveloped Sissala district of northern Ghana. Our aim is to support the local people to build an ethically sustainable economy, to improve the quality of education and sports opportunities for children in the area and to promote the development of community led eco-tourism. Examples of our projects include:
APPEAL
We would like to appeal to individuals, church groups, clubs, schools and other organisations to donate bicycles, reading books, educational toys & games, stationery, computers and sports equipment to be put to the benefit of the Sissala communities. We also need to raise financial donations to deliver these goods to Ghana. Please telephone 01236 823869 for delivery or collection of goods.
During April 2009 we delivered another supply of school resources (pens, pencils, rulers, calculators etc) to pupils in Pulima Primary, in the Sissala area of northern Ghana. These resources were donate by Scottish primary schools and UK businesses. We are continuing to collect donated goods and are fundraising so that we can deliver more stationery to a cluster of primary schools in the Sissala area (Pulima, Sorbelle, Silbelle, Kong, Buoti and Jewia Primary Schools)
These resources are very important for the Sissala children who still struggle to get text books and stationery.
There is a huge enthusiasm for football in Ghana. Football is an excellent sport for providing hope and motivation to the children. Most children in the Sissala area play football in the evening, after school and chores. The children tie rags and plastic bags to make a football. Our aim is to set-up clubs and provide football equipment for the children. On our recent project visit (April 2009) we delivered 12 footballs, one for each compound in the village. We also supplied a football and training shorts for the local football club.
We would like to provide each village with a full kit (footballs, football strips & boots, shin guards etc) and a small grant to improve their local football pitch. We want to encourage girls to play football and establish a boys’ team and girls’ team that could share the same resources. We also want to help the village teams to organise an annual football tournament to celebrate their achievements.
The Lasajang Community Project raised funds to build the foundation of a nursery school in Pulima; which was completed with the aid of a grant from the European Union. The main source of learning for young children is through play and the greater the variety of learning materials available to them the broader their learning and understanding of the world around them. We delivered a small selection of toys and games for Pulima Nursery in April 2009. We are continuing to collect games, toys and resources to supply to nurseries in the Sissala area.
Shea butter comes from the Shea or karite tree which grows wild in the north of Ghana. It is regarded as a sacred tree and grows in abundance as it is never cut down. Shea butter contains many healing ingredients, including vitamins, minerals, and proteins, and has excellent anti-aging, soothing and moisturising properties. It also has natural sunscreen properties and anti-inflammatory agents.
The Sissala women collect the fruits and extract the nuts which are then dried, ground and boiled to extract the precious butter. This is a long and laborious process that requires a considerable amount of firewood and water, that has to be collected by the women.
Preliminary research from Ghana has shown that we can support rural Sissala communities in northern Ghana to mechanically extract the shea butter using a grinding mill and screw expeller. This mechanical extraction will reduce the labour time by 3 hours per day and will reduce the amount of firewood by 80%. The sheanut butter can be processed further to make body creams and soaps to be sold to fair-trade retail outlets in Europe and other western markets. The raw shea butter is popular in America and with the correct packaging and labelling there would be a market for the direct sale via the internet. We received funding for this project in August 2008 from the Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland, who generously gave a grant for £11,450 for the sheanut butter extraction equipment.
A grain bank is a community facility where the local farmers are enabled to set up a secure storage facility for their grains within their local community. The bank is able to buy and sell and operates in many ways like a financial institution. Loans are issued, interest is charged and assets are held. The only difference is that grains provide the means of exchange instead of cash. We are currently looking for funding to implement this project.
In order to enable the farmers to set up a grain bank, an initial grains loan is given to the local community, entrusted in the hands of a local management committee which consist of all sections of the community.
The grain bank can buy the local crops during the harvesting season from the producing communities when the prices are low and the supply is high and then lend back some of the grains to the communities at reduce rates during the difficult times which is usually the main farming season. The farmers are able to spend their few resources on cultivating their land rather than struggling to cope with hunger and tedious farm work at the same time.
Any loans that are given to farmers during the farming season will be paid back to the bank with a reasonable amount of interest and any surplus generated is sold for ethical profits. All profits and interest generated from trading is used to payback the original grain loan, increase the supply of grains to the bank and also to meet other communal needs such as buying text books for the village school, supporting the building of a day nursery or supporting the local women to produce sheabutter creams and helping to link them to local, regional and international markets.
Benefits of a community grain bank
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Food Security- Low cost food available to everyone in the community all year round.
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Food will be available at the crucial months of June to August when farmers and their families need it most.
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Better supply of local seeds for sowing
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Low wastage of food due to better storage
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Increase yields, if the farmers are well fed they can spend their energy in cultivating more land and managing it properly.
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It is simple to run and does not require any expensive external technical support.
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It is more accountable because of the local management committee system.
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It is sustainable because the benefits are clear and mutual. If everyone benefits, everyone cares.
Types of crops grown
The most commonly grown crops in the Sissala communities are maize, groundnuts and beans. Several other food and cash crops are grown in the area but for the purpose of this pilot, we will concentrate on those identified above which are all produced in significantly large quantities.
Management committees
A village based management committee will be set up to directly monitor and oversee the development of their own community bank. At least 30% of all management committee members would be women unless it is obviously impossible to achieve this target. This is because women and children and the elderly are often the most vulnerable when their is food insecurity.
The management committee in consultation with the local community will have the power to set prices which they believe are fare and responsible to the viability of the village bank. LCP will supply initial and ongoing capacity building training to the management committee on areas such as book keeping, communication, openness and accountability and other practical support necessary for progress of the grain banks.
Sustainability
The support provided by the LCP will be one-off small grants which will enable the communities to set up a secure storage units and the contribution of the village own grains in the first year will be matched by the LCP. After the first four years, the capacity of the community would have been enhanced with a well functioning, open and accountable management committee which will carry on with their own visioning and progress.
Tool banks operate effectively in association with community grain banks. Appropriate farming tools are made available on hire or loan throughout the year to allow farmers easy access to basic tools like hoes, cutlasses, digging stakes, harrows and bullock services. In order to support the Sissala communities to grow, we have to provide them with the tools to do it for themselves.
Resources
There are several villages among the Sissala communities where tool making is a major trade. The LCP will assist the local blacksmiths to improve the quality and quantities of the tools they make.
An initial grant in the form of a loan will be given to each village or community to set up their own tool bank. The tool bank will be able to get their tools from the locally accredited manufactures which they can hire or lend to the farmers in their service area.
The tool banks will also be given loans to set up bullocks services within their areas so that in the farming seasons, the bullocks can help plough and till the land for cultivation. It is hoped that after four to five years of operation, a tool bank is able to buy a tractor to back up bullock services, thus integrating both traditional and modern tools to gain the benefits of both.
Project Sustainability
The farmers are not required to pay for tools immediately. A tool bank is a vital community development resource. The farmers can hire farming equipments, tools and other farming related services and pay back later after their harvest.
Green Gardens
Green gardens would be set up on a family basis. Our research has shown that there could be as many as 30 green gardens in a small community of eight hundred people. The rational behind a green garden is to manage wastewater and recycle organic waste to cultivate vegetables like garden eggs, tomatoes, green leaves, pepper which are all vital soup ingredients regularly used by the communities.
The main advantage of a green garden is that it does not depend directly on the natural rainfall, as most of the water required to grow the crops is already used water from the community. Another advantage is that a green garden will help improve the sanitation of the local community. All organic waste products will be recycled rather than thrown away, creating bad smells and attracting flies which can easily spread disease like cholera, which inflicts pain and can cost the lives of many children in these communities.
Our aim is to collect used garden tools from Scotland and provide training on how to use and maintain these tools to create sustainable benefits. We can collect spades, forks, rakes, hoes etc which would make the garden work much easier.
Benefits of Green Gardens
· It creates communal bonding as each garden is run by the whole family for its mutual benefit rather than individuals
· Better vegetables will greatly enhance the diet of the family and therefore improve their health and well-being
· Better sanitation will minimise the spread of disease
· It improves the income of the family through the sale of any surplus they generate
Management of a Green Garden
The individual families who benefit from it will directly manage their own gardens. LCP will provide training and networking opportunities for the village gardeners to share, skills and resources, which brings communal benefits to the whole community.
Sustainability
If the whole family benefits, everyone will look after it properly. Green gardens are not labour intensive. All it requires is proper care. The villagers will be encouraged to operate their green garden with strong social work ethics. This will make the work on the green garden feel leisurely rather than just another chore.
Farmers will be supported to research and develop local techniques for producing and using organic manure from livestock and other environmentally recyclable waste. This organic manure can be used on the green gardens. Chinese farmers have been using a method of creating manure for centuries. They make a compost heap with fresh manure, add some plants and soil, and cover the heap with mud. The heat that builds up inside the compost pile kills many weed seeds and disease germs, and produces better fertilizer which is suitable for the environment. Rural communities in northern Ghana have been particularly affected from over use of chemical fertilisers for decades. Chemical fertilisers affect the porosity of the soil and also contaminate local rivers. It is therefore vital to continue to look at other alternative and greener methods of using the land to achieve sustainable human progress.
Support will be given to the Sissala communities to make local crafts such as weaving, basket making, wall hangings, wooden ornaments, hand made drums, clay pots etc. These can be sold in Ghana and also to the world-wide market via the internet.