UEnd Blog

Project Snapshot

Total Cost: $13,500

Lives Affected: 300

Dollars Raised: $797

Dollars Needed: $12,703

This project is designed to empower the women of the Lawra District, in Ghana, through the improvement of their living standards. This is expected to help both them and their immediate families throughout the process.

Our friends at ‘FORDG’ (Friends of Rural Development Ghana) are implementing this project, and the plan is to provide the beneficiary women with micro-credit aimed at teaching them how to farm groundnuts. This economic assistance will help lead to well-balanced meals, improved health care, and the provision of basic needs for them and their children.

In the first year, they will be taught basic value-adding techniques using the groundnuts they produce, and the micro-credit shall be directed at enabling each beneficiary to cultivate one acre of groundnuts. The second year, the group of women are trained how to produce different things using the crop such as groundnut oils and cake. Aside from this, they will also be taught how to efficiently manage their resources since they are limited.

To learn more about this project, click here.

Join the UEnd:Poverty movement and help change the world with a $5/month membership to U:Powered. Learn how by clicking here.

Project Snapshot

Total Cost: $5,084

Lives Affected: 109

Dollars Raised: $3,629   

Dollars Needed: $1,455

Our partners at ‘True Vision Ghana’ are heading a project in Wa, Upper-West Region, Ghana, to assist those caregivers who must take care of at least one AIDS orphan, aside from their family.

Northern Ghana is the most impoverished region in Ghana, and one of the most poverty-stricken areas in Africa. Most of the caregivers have multiple jobs already and do not have big enough profit margins to receive a loan from the bank.

True Vision Ghana hopes to engage these caregivers in the Economic Empowerment Program by giving them small 200 GHS (approximately 126 CDN) loans for a 1-year term with the purpose of starting or expanding a small business to generate income.

To learn more about this project, click here.

Join the UEnd:Poverty movement and help change the world with a $5/month membership to U:Powered. Learn how by clicking here.

Project Snapshot

• Lives affected: 300

• Project cost: $13,500

• Dollars raised: $793

• Dollars needed: $12,707

Project Description:

This project will empower women through the improvement of their living standards. This is expected to impact not only their own lives, but the lives of their immediate family as well.

The intention is to provide beneficiary women with micro-credit aimed at helping them get into farming of groundnuts. This will hopefully provide the beneficiaries with economic empowerment that will lead to well-balanced meals for their families, improved health care, and provision of basic needs for both themselves and their children. The project will be for an initial three-year period.

Participants will be taught the best practices in groundnut cultivation for high yields. They will also receive training on how to undertake some simple value-added processing activities using the groundnuts they produce. In the first year, each of the 100 beneficiaries will be given the micro-credit facility to enable her to cultivate one acre of groundnuts.

In the second year, the first group of women will be given training in groundnut oil and groundnut cake production while a new group of 100 women will be selected to benefit from the micro-credit facility. In all this, women will also gain some training on how to effectively manage their resources for maximum benefit. This is necessary since resources are always limited.

What you can do

Follow this project on the UEnd.org website and if you feel like this is something you’d like to donate too, please do. Or if you have a special occasion coming up like a family member’s or friend’s birthday, send them a UEnd gift card for this project.

We received a project update from the people at True Vision Ghana that we think you’ll like. Looks like the micro-loans given to 28 families are proving to be quite successful! Awesome!

Below is a snapshot of the update. See the full update and download their newsletter by visiting the project page on our website.

So far the roll out of the Economic Empowerment microloan program has gone quite smoothly. 28 caregivers of AIDS orphans have been enrolled in the program and each received a 200 GHS loan in early April 2011. The first caregiver meeting was held in June 2011 and 24 out of the 28 caregivers attended. Most were able to meet the 20 GHS monthly repayment amount and one caregiver was even able to double her repayment! Overall TVG had an 85% repayment rate at the first caregiver meeting… Read more

Hi all,

This will be the last in the series on education and its relation to eradication of poverty projects.
To review the series to date, the first week was a general education primer and how it relates to ending poverty. The second included some useful links and examples of how this is true outside of UEnd’s projects. The third and fourth weeks examine projects, one completed and one not yet funded. This week we will highlight a project seeking funding and look at why we thought it was a good fit with UEnd and our policy of supporting sustainable community development projects.

With that in mind, let’s look at the Livestock for Life Project in the Lawra District of Ghana. The partner in this case is FORDG. I want to look at this one because it is not what one would normally think of when one says education.

“The project seeks to reduce the impact of poverty on rural women and thus lead to improved living standards for beneficiaries and their families. This will be done by providing beneficiaries with livestock or rams (in this case)which they will rear/fatten and later sell. The project will seek to equip women with skills of rearing by best practices which will serve as the basis for them to gain economic empowerment which is expected to reflect in many aspects of their lives including but not limited to better health, nutritious meals, and education of their children.”

The intended outcomes for the projects are:
1. After 3 years, 300 women will have been assisted in rearing and given training on best practices for rearing of sheep.
2. Indirectly, families of 300 women will benefit from the economic empowerment and financial management skills of the women involved in the program.
3. Livestock rearing will serve as an alternate source of funds for women.

So…what makes this a good education project? Lets take a look at it from UEnd’s perspective. There are thoughts in brackets after the points of interest that explain how it fits into our selection process.
1. The education or training provided to the beneficiaries to learn herd management care techniques to ensure that the initial rams given out serve as the foundation for the future not just one season of food(sustainability, creating opportunities, leaving the skills with the people).
2. Farming is a traditional lifestyle in rural Ghana, one often performed by women thus this program works with existing cultural and community norms. (community development based- the project takes into account the local traditions so it is easier to build on what exists and grow it further).
3. The training on what do with the increased earnings, the financial management ensures that the beneficiaries can manage their new found wellbeing into the future and impact their family’s future as well. (This is a bigger picture view than just the rams, what larger impact can the project have on the community).
4. The idea for the project came from the people in the community. It was not some parachute idea brought in by some foreigner that decided that the people in the Lawra District needed to learn how to rear goats. (True community development work creates solution that come from the people living in the community. The work needs to start from a place of capacities that can be built not deficits- it is about opportunities not lack of ability).
5. The fact that the project is based in the community with multiple years and phases of beneficiary training creates a support structure for those just entering the program to further ensure success. (Once the money is spent, there will be local people who can become leaders to assist others in the community further enhancing community wide strength and cohesion).

I hope this helps so that in the future when you look at our projects you can understand that it is a good project for your investment and support. If you like the project, please give to it. Your donation does not have to be alot in terms of dollar amount but every little bit helps.

I think I have gone on long enough… Thanks for reading.

Happy Monday!

This post will continue the focus on UEnd projects.

Last week we focused on one particular project and why it was effective from a sustainability perspective. This week we will continue to speak to this but come at from the perspective of the project, in their own words. UEnd calls this proof of impact. It is what makes UEnd different from other agencies. We ask all of our projects to give us quarterly impact statements from the projects. We believe that it helps to hear from the people receiving the funds. It puts a face on the people and their efforts to get out of poverty. It also helps to put a context around what seemingly small budgets can do in a place like Africa.

This time we will look at the Care and Aid Program for AIDS Orphans. It is a True Vision Ghana (TVG) project.

The context:
- This project works with children living with HIV/AIDS and orphans of AIDS. TVG believes that these children deserve to be treated with equality, dignity, and respect.
- The reality is these children are often the victims of marginalization and stigmatization in their communities through no fault of their own. They were/are the children of parents with AIDS.
- The Care and Aid program is one part of a multi-pronged approach working to reduce the stigma as well as the impact of HIV/AIDS in Northern Ghana. For this project, we will provide opportunities for these marginalized children to integrate into the wider community by supporting their basic needs, education, and strengthening their ability to build relationships through other recreational activities.
- Although all 40 orphans supported by the project are currently living with extended relatives or other caretakers, they are not receiving sufficient support to meet basic needs such as food, medicine, and access to education.

About Ghana:
Northern Ghana has higher rates of poverty than southern Ghana and the Upper West Region in particular is one of the most impoverished regions in the country. In Northern Ghana, approximately 65% of the population lives in the poorest quintile, reporting annual expenditures of less than 40 cents per day in 1999 (Mazzucato et al. 2008).

The project impact from a participant’s perspective:
This is Diana’s Story. I am Diana Boyiri who is ten years of age. I come from Tizza in the Jirapa-Lambusie district of the Upper West Region. I am the second born of five children. I attend school at Fongo E/A primary school in the Wa municipality and I live in Dokpong with my aunt Prospera.
I was seven years when my dad died and a year after that I lost my mum too rendering me an orphan. I was told my parents died of strange illnesses which was suspected to be AIDS. After their death, my siblings and I were left alone with nobody to care for us. By then my elder sister was in junior high school and she used to skip school in order to work as a labourer for people to get some income for us to survive on whilst attending school.
Diana (right) with her 3 younger siblings. All are orphans in the TVG program.

This is how we survived until the intervention of our only concerned relative (an older aunt who had a better job). Unfortunately she fell ill of breast cancer and died. After her burial in Accra, Aunt Prospera , our younger aunt who was taking care of our sick aunt came to Wa to take care of us.

Aunt Prospera, though not a high-income earner, has been catering for us all this while. She works as a domestic cleaner in a hotel/restaurant in Wa. She has been doing her best but we sometimes have to cope with what she can afford and we are left alone sometimes without guidance because our aunt has to work long hours to earn income. Aunt Prospera could afford to put only myself and two of my siblings in school. The other two were not in school and TVG helped put them in school this academic year.

Editor’s Note:
Questioning Diana on what she aspires to become in future and also her thoughts about TVG, this is what she said: “I want to pursue nursing as my future career and so I aspire to be a nurse in order to help people get cured of their illnesses and don’t die like my parents did. TVG is very beneficial to me and my siblings because it is helping us realize our future dreams.”

Diana’s story is inspirational. She went from being orphaned to being put through school (as opposed to being forced to work to get food for the family) and dreaming of helping and educating and others so they do not have to survive through the same hardships. If you do the math it is only $105.00/ child to give them a bright future with hopes, dreams and poosibilities of not living in poverty. We believe this is a good investment of donor funds, do you? We certainly hope you think so. Stay tuned as we will bring more of the stories and updates from the field to show you the impact of even small donations.

To see the full update from the field in Dec 2009 click here.
To see some photos from the field click here