My weekend in Volta and other things

Dearest friends,

We arrived in Volta at about 10am after having been on the bus for about 3 hours. We arrived at a hotel and pulled up to the building which was marked with the name "The Brick House". Mr. Gyesi got off the bus only to come back a few minutes later to say, "Umm...the president of Ghana will be here in 30 minutes". About an hour later, 5 police motorcycles, 5 police cars, and 5 SUVs drove by in a procession. He drove through a gate marked on both sides by policemen and given the parade of reporters walking through we decided to do the same. We walked through the gate, Me, Billy, Dana, Talia, and Mary and stood up near the crowd. The cameras crowded around the man that emerged from the large black SUV wearing a hard hat. The president had come to the hotel because the manager was building a mall and the President decided it was a good stop on his encouraging development tour. So there I was, standing in this big crowd near the President of Ghana. We inched closer and closer and evenutally go within a foot of the President, close enough to shake his hand. However everything was recorded and we weren't respectfully dressed to shake his hand, so we didn't. The President finished his speech and walked over to the building site, looked the plans, and shook the hands of a large group of visitors from a church in Scotland & Germany that had arranged to meet him. Me and Tali rushed to the end of the line to try and get a handshake as he went around, but we were just a couple seconds too late. Nonetheless, I was within a foot of the President of Ghana and that was pretty dam cool!

Later that afternoon we traveled down to Wli falls, the tallest waterfall in West Africa. It stands at a height of nearly 200 feet and pounds onto the lagoon below with massive force. Almost our entire group walked into the water and bravely trekked through the waterfall. The next day we visited the Tofi Atome Monkey Sanctuary and I fed small monkeys bananas. We made loud kissing noises and the monkeys started coming from throughout the trees. As we held onto the bananas strongly, the monkeys would reach out from the trees and peel the bananas right from our hands!

At my internship, I've been spending the past couple of weeks evaluating the organization's Micro-credit program. I've traveled all over greater Accra meeting with GHAFUP groups to conduct group interviews about the successes and failures of the micro-loan program. The work has given me key insight into the challenges of grassroots development work. Microfinance is a very tricky business. Although it's not the key of People's Dialogue, it tends to be main reason for members joining the Federation. From what I could tell, repayment has been a significant problem for a number of reasons. The first is that many people use the loan to buy materials for their business (i.e. Fish mongers buy fish to smoke, store owners buy provisions) and use the income generated by the selling of these products for immediate needs. The primary needs are school fees, food, and emergencies (i.e. relative sick). After these immediate needs are met a small portion of the original loan is invested in the business so the impact of the loan significantly diminishes rather than increases over time. When there aren't complementary programs that alleviate the press of these immediate needs, this is a common occurrence. So after several months the impact of the loan is gone and they are left to repay it. In addition, some members of the Federation have joined primarily for the possibility of loans and will pay back the loan if they know a new one is coming. Some individuals have the capital to pay the loan back, but would rather use it for other things like feeding kids, if a new loan is not coming. Without a new loan coming there's no incentive to pay it back. Because PD is not an MFI, there isn't always money available to make loans for everyone who received a first loan, so repayment level is hurt. Nonetheless, there has been a significant impact of the loans on individuals as they're able to start businesses when they were doing nothing before, put their kids through education, provide for families as widows, and build there businesses from a table on the side of the street to a store. This is part of what I'll be putting into the evaluation I'm preparing for the office. I'd be glad to talk more about what I've learned, but most of it I don't want to put up online.

Overall, I've learned a great deal about grassroots community development work, mobilizing individuals for self-help, the difference between on the field and in the office work, and the potential of the poorest of the poor in Ghana to improve their lives.

All the best,
Ben