Teachers Training and Liberia Refugee Camp

Teachers Training and Liberia Refugee Camp

Fridays are reserved for staff meetings and administrative work. After planning the schedule for next week and going over all of our current projects, I decided join the director for a teachers training in the local fishing village of Nyano. We arrived at one of the local schools where around 15 teachers had come to listen to the training. The focus was on lesson planning both about its importance as well as how to do it. I was shocked to find that less than a quarter of the teachers were planning their lessons. Eric, the director, stress how important teachers are to the future of the children and the country. The root cause of children not growing academically or in some cases losing ground is due to a lack of planning on the teacher’s part. Many teachers start class late, ramble through the material, or even don’t know enough about the subject to field questions and help the children understand. Luckily, this group of teachers was very responsive to Eric’s message and many asked about follow up trainings.  

Because I had some free time in the afternoon, I decided to join another volunteer who was working on a side project at a local orphanage. She works on the public health project and spends several days in the local health clinic. During that time, she formed a relationship with an orphanage and decided to help paint their facility. The health clinic and orphanage is located in the Liberia Refugee camp about 15 minutes outside of Kasoa. This area of land was given to the UN to create a refugee camp during the Liberian civil war in the 90s. After the war was completed, Liberian citizens were either offered to go back to Liberia, or some were given a ticket to the United States. With many not wanting to return and a minimal time limit on the United States offer, a large number of Liberians still live in the camp (although many Ghanaians have also moved in during the last 5-10 years). It was interesting walking around the camp. Many buildings still looked like temporary house. The buildings, which were made of wooden walls and sheet metal roofs, had been built to last a couple years, even though it had been almost 20 years since the camp’s creation. Poverty was a problem and the streets were covered in trash. In the past year a large area of homes had been bulldozed to make room for the health center, effectively leaving many families homeless. Prostitution has also become a problem in the camp as it is very difficult to makes ends meet. There is still work to be done at the orphanage, but all of the residents were so excited with the new paint job and could not stop talking about how beautiful their home now looked.   

Twi word of the day=

Madase “Thank you”