Thursday, April 3, 2014

Week 12: Saying Goodbye

We had a busy last week in the bush. Margaret came back from Accra to give us a send off party. We finalized funding in Asamama, worked on collections, enjoyed a last dinner with the Abu's, gave our farewells to Douglas, and headed to Accra. Somewhere in there, we managed to volunteer at the Abomosu Health Clinic twice for a couple of hours, as well as take the hike to Teeny Falls (which is a beautiful hike, even if there is no waterfall during the Dry Season). Since we are in Accra now, we decided that we would let the pictures speak, since we've been limited in posting pictures while we haven't had the best internet. Enjoy!

We are going to miss the people we've gotten to know so well over the past few months, particularly the Abu's and Douglas. We are so grateful for the opportunities that we've had to learn and grow in Ghana this semester.

At the Health Clinic, David was given the task of tearing paper in half...a lot of it.


Teeny Falls
Douglas and his daughter, Annette. Douglas' family made us some AMAZING fufu and palm nut soup.

Week 11: Funding


The Asamama Farmers
This week, we’ve finally gotten everything in order to fund our Asamama class. We’ve had some challenges due to our inability to connect to the internet. We’ve had to be patient until the internet was working well enough to access the database, but once all of the accounting was verified for Ghana WSV cash flows, we were given the go ahead to fund our 27 students. Up until the point in the semester, we had only funded second-time loans. There’s a different sense of accomplishment with the first time loan recipients. The process of teaching the classes were longer in duration. Also, the amount of time invested in due diligence, interviewing, grading homework, selecting the best students, and writing business plans was quite extensive. We couldn’t have asked for a better last Friday in Abomosu than we got with funding the 27 top students from our class of 60 finishers.

Week #10


We are starting to wrap things up here in Ghana. We were very excited to end the week by funding our Akwadum/Akwaduso combined second-loan classes. We were able to give out 17 loans to four different pods. All of these 17 people paid back their first loans in full and on time. Additionally, they attended all of our intermediate classes and did well on their homework. They were all so excited to finally be receiving their funding that they were willing to meet us early on a Saturday morning to fill out the paperwork and get the cash.

This week, we also attended a school fundraiser for Akwadum and Ekorso. Douglas was the chair of the event, so we went to support him. It was fun to see him fulfilling one of his other roles, and it was a testament to what an amazing man he is. Douglas is very impressive with all that he manages to get done from day to day. We enjoyed spending time with his two youngest children, Slyvester and Annette.

The interns with Douglas' son, Slyvester
After funding our Akwadum/Akwaduso class