I am now off to Africa for four months with Engineers Without Borders. My destination is Ghana, which is located on the coast of West Africa, a country roughly the size of the State of Colorado in the United States of America. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=ghana&sll=49.246886,-123.067795&sspn=0.008012,0.01929&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Ghana&ll=7.950437,-1.032715&spn=12.423619,19.753418&z=6
This process started with a week of training in Toronto, where 12-18 hour days of training pertaining to overseas development work has just finished. During this time I met a great group of fellow volunteers from all across Canada who will be heading off with me to do work in either Ghana, Malawi, or Burkina Faso. It is in these countries, as well as Zambia, that Engineers Without Borders carries out its overseas development work.
During this week, I gained great insight into the complexity and scale of poverty in the developing world. Not only does development work require investment and empowerment at the grass roots level, but it is something that also requires addressing fundamental power imbalances that allow great global inequalities to exist. Therefore, not only does Engineers Without Borders do work at the grass roots level, but they do work at the regional (in country), national (government), and international (trade policy) levels.
My project requires me to travel to the town of Saboba in the Northern Region of Ghana. This part of Ghana is 3439kms squared, with a population of approximately 120,000 people. It is located near Ghana's eastern border which is shared with the country of Togo.
My partnership is with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) in Ghana, and my duties are as follows:
Objective 1: Ensure the smooth handover of the Agriculture As a Business program, (which was created by Engineers without Borders to train rural farmers), to the local ministry to allow them to deliver the program without Engineers Without Borders involvement.
Objective 2: Support the capacity of the various ministries and agents who are carrying out the training of the program.
Objective 3: To become a change agent of international development by creating a connection and sharing knowledge between Ghana and Canada.
That is a bit of information to hopefully help frame what it is that I am heading overseas to do. I look forward to blogging more about my experiences and sharing greater detail about the work of Engineers Without Borders while in Ghana.
