Posted for Internships, Sabre, Staff

New position available in Ghana – Assistant Programme Director

Adding to our recent posts of available positions is this one. We are looking for someone to come aboard for around twelve months to take on the role of Assistant Programme Director in Ghana. Please do have a look at the job description below if you are interested.

Posted for Internships, Sabre

Ghanaian Outreach Volunteer Position

Exciting new position available with us to help engage with the Ghanaian diaspora in the UK. See below for full role description and how to apply:

Posted for Internships, Linking Schools

Internship Opportunity

Our friends at Partner Ghana have an internship opportunity available for 12-15 months from mid-June based in Ghana. They are seeking applicants in the UK. For more information see role description below:

To apply or for more information please email partner@partnerghana.org

Posted for Events, News

Life Without Lights

Photography exhibition by acclaimed photographer Peter di Campo documenting the daily struggle of energy poverty in northern Ghana. The exhibition runs from 6th – 12th February 2012 at The Strand Gallery, 32 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6BP.

Life Without Lights from Peter DiCampo on Vimeo.

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Posted for Building Schools, Sabre

Building child-friendly & sustainable kindergarten schools in Ghana

Presentation given at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana as part of the First Annual Conference of International Research in Early Childhood Education (IRECE).

Presenters: Mr. Dominic Bond & Mr. Nicholas Parish

Institution: Sabre Charitable Trust, United Kingdom and Ghana

Sabre has recently completed the construction of its second Sustainable Kindergarten Complex in Ghana’s Central Region. Designed in collaboration with Arup, the goal of the design is for each classroom to be child friendly and promote the ability for children to ‘learn through play’ whilst delivering a school building which is environmentally sustainable.
The technology used to build the classrooms includes:

• Coconut husk insulation in the roof to sound proof against heavy rain and keep the classroom itself cool.
• White painted ceilings and walls to lighten the room.
• Slatted pivoting windows stretching fully along two walls to allow for a constant flow of fresh air.
• Rain water harvesting to provide clean water for hand washing and cooking.
• Enough space so that, even with 60 pupils, every child has 1.65m2 space.

The size and design enables teachers to set up different ‘learning centres’ in the classroom in line with the aims of the KG curriculum and best teaching practice. Outside each classroom is a dedicated external teaching area large enough to accommodate and provide shade for 60 pupils.

If video doesn’t show, you can view it here.

Posted for Literacy Enhancement, Volunteering

A volunteer writes…

In June of 2011, my boyfriend and I went to Ghana for two weeks to volunteer with the Sabre Charitable Trust. These are the thoughts and impressions I took away from the experience…

An excellent idea in theory, teaching presented a certain conundrum as a) I am supremely shy in most social settings and b) I am not a very confident public speaker, as I detest being the centre of attention. Unfortunately, teaching involves a good portion of human interaction as well as spotlight, and the plan was nearly thwarted by those two oversights. As our travels approached, recent memories of university presentations usurped. They always managed to produce an unflattering shade of red in my complexion, one that I have otherwise only had to endure after excessive sun exposure to my fair Scandinavian skin. Someone once pointed this out, so many hours were spent trying to convince myself of being able to stand up in front of a class full of children (at least 40 wild ones with great expectations, I imagined). I scoured the internet for articles and advice. A book was even purchased as an additional measure of confidence building, but as it turned out, the teaching part was genuinely the highlight of it all.

To begin with, the walk to the school was beautiful and it provided a little bit of an insight into the daily life of a random fishing community in rural Ghana. The first half was along the same gorgeous sandy beach that extended into the grounds of the Inn we were staying at. I reckon that’s a pretty good run to the office in the morning. It made for excellent photo opportunities too; so good that I started to feel a little promiscuous with my camera, desperate to snap every single impression of mine in this distant intriguing territory. With each picture, however, I felt more and more like the annoying tourist I was trying so hard not to be. Just next door to Stumble there was a whole bunch of them staying at an inappropriately luxurious beach resort that according to a website included a crocodile pond, golf course, wireless internet connection, tennis courts and large conference facilities, amongst other things. I’m not suggesting that these people didn’t deserve a bout of rest and relaxation, it’s just that it felt a little awkward walking past there only to find myself navigating through a desperately primitive local village just two minutes further along the route.

In Ghana the official language is English, and it makes sense when you consider the fact that there are another nine languages sponsored by the government, with many additional unofficial languages and dialects spoken as well. In the Central Region, where we were teaching, most people speak a dialect of Ashanti called ‘Fante’, but this one village that we walked through on the way to school was made up of people from an entirely different culture with a different language. Apparently they speak ‘Ewe’, and they are mostly all fishermen, moving around Ghana quite regularly, almost like gypsies (or so we were told). The fact that they never settle properly for a significant period of time, at least mentally, could potentially explain their primitive living conditions. They obviously don’t have much in the way of money, but maybe it’s also just not worth the effort to build better houses. Either way, Sebastian and I stood out there like two cows in a chicken coop, which meant that we received a fair bit of attention. In England I only really attract prolonged stares from old ladies on buses or perverted drunk guys in clubs (I guess it isn’t really socially acceptable), so to garner the amount of looks we did in Ghana made me feel a little like I had either grown a second head or forgotten to put on trousers. The children took a particularly keen interest in our presence, and they weren’t afraid to approach us. Some would shout or sing at us from a distance, and others flocked around us to get a feel of a white person’s skin with great big grins on their faces. I had never been made to feel quite as aware of my ethnicity as when I went to Ghana, particularly since we were always greeted as ‘Obruni’, which literally means white person. It took some time to get used to, since I’d always been taught not to categorize people by colour, but the term is actually more of a descriptive label than offensive slur. Mostly ‘Obruni’ was used in an affectionate manner, but the fact that so many people were vying for our attention simply because we were white, and therefore apparently of special or superior status, was a little awkward. It was a reminder, in a way, of the European imperialism that once dominated Ghana.  The second half of our school run, nevertheless, made for a nice change. Not least because by the time you had reached it you were utterly exhausted from fighting your way through the sand, which invariably resulted in about half the beach penetrating your footwear. It was also a sobering experience.

The village was unbearably foul-smelling, with rubbish strewn everywhere and fish being smoked around the clock. The houses looked similar to the red mud constructions from Stumble, but they were most definitely more densely populated and shared by a number of goats, chickens, pigs and dogs. These animals were everywhere, roaming freely about in a quest to find a patch of vegetation, and if you hadn’t noticed quite how numerous they were, you probably would have realized from having to forge an awkward path around their many ‘trails’. The women and young children, who were mostly the ones sitting outside the huts as we walked past every morning, didn’t seem to take any notice of what animals left and entered their compound, so I often wondered how they were able to tell their pets apart from the neighbour’s. I can only imagine that the goats, pigs and chickens were bred for consumption rather than companionship, but surely you would need to know which are yours before firing up the stove in your open-air kitchen. I was later told that they actually return home every night, presumably to be fed, so evidently the system worked. But apart from the many animals, another thing that struck me as I walked through the village was how little privacy the living arrangements allowed for. In my own experience a certain amount of alone-time has always been of vital importance to maintain a healthy level of sanity, so it was odd to see that many people living so closely together.  It’s not as if you would be able to just kick back in the corner of a room with your iPod and a good book, since you most certainly wouldn’t have access to those kind of electronic devices, and perhaps not even electricity, for that matter. It really didn’t look like people had much. The children that always came running up to us were clad in ragged old clothes, and you would often see the girls fetching water from a pump somewhere in the village – a hassle far removed from anything I have ever known. Admittedly, I had never been to the developing world before I went to Ghana, and I had never seen poverty first-hand. It wasn’t the kind that kills that I was witnessing on my way to school (no one was quite dying of starvation), but rather the kind that guarantees a life of struggling and deprives you of the freedom to participate in the decisions that shape your life.

We were teaching at a primary school – access to which is guaranteed by the government- but because high school enrolment requires a fee high enough to rather be spent on food and other basic necessities, this is the highest level of education most of the children will reach. The school looked a tad different to the kinds I attended in Denmark and Germany, not least because it looked conspicuously small for the amount of children that were in and around the classrooms. This was no coincidence. At our induction meeting, which unsurprisingly didn’t take place until the day before we were leaving, the headmaster told us that the school is in quite dire need of new classrooms. Not teaching in the traditional sense, our jobs were to help out in the library (which was really just one little room, albeit a very nice one). Every day groups of pupils arrived from specific classes and remained for the duration of a lesson to allow more attention both for the ones who hadn’t been picked back in the classroom, and for the ones in the library. Sebastian and I would each be in charge of a group of five at a time, with whom we did various writing and vocabulary exercises. After school, which ends around 2pm in Ghana, the library stayed open for children who wished to come to read, write or draw, and it was often then that we met some of the sweetest kids. To be fair, they were all very pleasant and well-behaved – the only really annoying thing was that they kept punching each other while we were trying to teach them. Much to my surprise, victims wouldn’t hit back, or even get offended; it was simply a function of how they treated each other. It was frustrating to watch, so I obviously explained to them whenever they resorted to their violent ways that it wasn’t okay, but from a teaching perspective the most irritating of all was when they copied each other’s work or laughed when someone made a mistake. I never realized this myself when I was at school, but you cannot learn without making mistakes. It’s good to make mistakes, as long as they’re not the same ones over and over again, because you learn from them (and I am a firm believer that this applies to life more generally as well). However, since the kids were so unwilling to risk getting something wrong, they copied their buddies’ incorrect work and everyone wound up with the same mistakes. I reckon that the problem comes down, at least in part, to the strict punishments they are subject to at home and at school, so if teachers and parents were to find different ways of disciplining and expressing displeasure, maybe the children would a) stop punching each other, and b) not be afraid to make mistakes when they’re learning (whether it be a language, maths, cooking or something else). Apart from anything, and apart from how soul wrenching it is to hear the cries of a child being beaten and to see the scars on their skin, I believe that corporal punishment is wrong out of principle. Violence begets violence, as was plainly to see at the school.

OK, so a couple of things left me a tad vexed, but apart from that they genuinely were a very delightful bunch. And let me just say that I was awe-struck with how completely motivated so many of the kids were to learn. They had this incredible ambition to succeed in life. A lot of them dreamed of becoming pilots and doctors, wanting to be able to take care of their families, and it saddened me to think that such futures most likely aren’t in store for them. Granted, very few people in the West end up doing what they thought they might when they were younger. I, for one, wanted to be a lawyer when I was a kid, with no real understanding of what that meant. I studied politics instead, because as I grew older I realized that’s what I was interested in. The difference between the kids in Bantuma and me is that I changed my mind, whereas they have few opportunities to pursue their dreams. I’d venture to guess that most people in England who fail to achieve career ambitions of becoming doctors fail because they don’t work hard enough. There is relative poverty in Europe too, of course there is, but most young people have the opportunity to take student loans if their parents cannot finance their higher education.

I have often been a little sceptical as to how constructive my presence at the school was to anyone but myself, but I am happy to challenge that and encourage others to go. By attending to such small groups at a time during the lessons, but particularly also in breaks and after school when the children were with me of own accord, I perhaps managed to teach them how to correctly pronounce or spell a few words more quickly than the teacher in a roomful of 40 other pupils might have. But my real purpose, it soon dawned on me, was to encourage and keep the pupils motivated to work hard. So many girls and boys of different ages came to the library after school, and they mostly seemed quite content reading on their own or with a friend. Like most other people, however, they enjoy praise if they do something right, and they listen dutifully to your corrections if they make a mistake. Unfortunately, in such big classes as theirs’, and often with at least four or five siblings at home, it is easy to be overlooked, so as soon as they sensed you were interested in their work, or they knew you wanted to listen to them read a book out loud, they would come back every day, excitedly pulling off one book after another from the shelves. Contrary to their brothers, as we were told by a local, the girls at school would most likely be expected and encouraged to stay at home after having finished their school careers, rather than pursue a job and life outside the village. So, the boys were often better at concentrating and they were probably also better at English on average, but the girls were definitely just as willing and keen to learn if you took the time to sit down with them. And this was the point of it all. If I ever managed to instil a little more confidence in any of the kids for them to want to keep coming back to the next batch of volunteers, or if I ever managed to get one to fan out his or her reading (they would always read one of about four different books) to practice different words, I would be very pleased – despite the fact that it sounds a lot like self-congratulory crap. Sebastian was good at inspiring some of the older kids we met to work hard, but with four-year old twin brothers I felt more comfortable around younger children less adept at detecting my nervous predisposition. I’d like to think that they liked me, certainly I thoroughly enjoyed their company, and hopefully, as I said, a few of them will be more inclined to pick up a book (at least for a while). It doesn’t sound like much, and I wish I could have stayed for months and not weeks. Perhaps then I would have been able to offer to give regular lessons to small groups of two or three, or even one-on-one lessons, to pupils lagging behind. In every class there’d be a few boys or girls up to four years older than some of their classmates. The school wasn’t exactly well equipped to deal with those not keeping up with the standards of their peers, and instead opted to repeatedly fail the ones that didn’t do well. Ideally you would help them reach the level required for successfully completing a course or a school year, but in Ghana it’s more of a ‘survival of the fittest’ logic that rules the classroom. Anyway, my point was that despite the fact that I only had the chance to stay in Ghana for two weeks, it was so very worthwhile.

My efforts were limited to a handling a fairly small number of students from one school, but it feeds into a greater, bigger picture where the goal is to improve literacy and increase the number of students who stay in education beyond primary school in Ghana and the developing world at large. I obviously couldn’t have made much of a contribution towards the latter without a significantly larger dedication of time and money, but I often think that the true work of making improvements rests with the little achievements of the day. In the fields of politics, international relations and development you’ll often come across people with big, fleeting goals, determined to become the new world leader, and to be the ones to save the world. The ones who do the real work, however, are concerned with the process, careful not to get lost in the goal. You need both of these types to drive development, obviously, but it’s just a real shame that the most hardworking and compassionate don’t have the ego or ambition to lead. It’s people like the guy who ran the library I’m talking about. At only 20, he is dedicating his life to helping the community he grew up in. His real dream is to work in the music industry, and every day he would talk passionately about various Ghanaian artists and play us their songs from off his phone (almost everyone has a phone in Ghana – often with internet access, mp3 playing abilities, and other snazzy functions Sebastian the Luddite doesn’t know how to use). If he is lucky and gets the chance, he said that he would like to try his hand at music production, but only in ten years. He was able to earn a high school diploma thanks to a charity awarding him a scholarship that would finance the deed, and so for now his priority is to work at the school we were at to encourage and prime pupils for the same opportunity that he was rewarded. And a shot at education is probably the most valuable and important opportunity you could ever receive.

Normative instruments of the United Nations, such as the United Nation Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 26), have promoted it as a fundamental human right. Education lays the foundation for a child’s intellectual, emotional and social development, and is thereby paramount for its ability to actively participate in society. Indeed, society reaps many benefits from having an educated populace. It is often said that education reduces crime and by driving competitiveness and improving productivity, it is also associated with economic growth. Furthermore, links are often made between highly educated populations and democratization, a process which yields great developmental benefits in its own right. But on an individual level, education, if accessible, is also a powerful tool for the many people living with abject poverty and hunger, undernourished and without safe drinking water, to escape poverty and improve their own living conditions. The attainment of an education is really the best shot anyone, rich or poor, has of taking charge of their own life. I guess my point is that I thoroughly admired what the guy from the library was doing and it was both humbling and inspiring to witness the children coming to him every day, ever so motivated.

In a crowded school with a high student-teacher ratio, it is easy to see how one’s help might be appreciated. More than anything, however, the experience was rewarding to me. Am I more open-minded or wiser after our adventure of eleemosynary assistance? I don’t know if I am either, but going to Ghana was certainly a fun and fascinating insight into a vastly different part of the world. Working in a rural school with local children allowed for an intimate insight into local life in one community, as well first-hand experience of a section of this world of sheer abundance that lives without the fundamental freedom to take charge of its desired destiny (even if Ghana actually fares well against its Sub-Saharan counterparts when it comes to development). As I said, I’m not suggesting that I returned home to Europe particularly wiser, but it was a humbling attempt at broadening my horizon, and now I cannot help but wonder how these places exist in the same world.

Trine Odin

Posted for Building Schools, News

Arup Design Yearbook 2011

Arup’s roundup of some of their diverse projects over 2011, including on pages 24-25 Sabre’s own sustainable kindergarten school!

 

 

Posted for Events, Fundraising

Grim Night Terror 8 Mile Run

Have you got New Years ambitions and resolutions to get fit?! We have the answer… The organisers of the Grim Challenge have allowed us to receive donations from competitors running in their inaugural night run event on February 4th… Grim Night Terror! Billed as an “8 mile run over daunting terrain, through creepy forests, clambering up sand dunes, wading through bogs, waist high in freezing cold water and all in the dead of night” it’s sure to keep your senses alert!

If you fancy taking part then please do get in touch. You can sign up here and start fund raising through our events page on Virgin Money Giving. You MUST sign up to this event before 27th January 2012 and entry is £25.

Good luck and remember that we are on hand for any fund raising advice. The official website for the event is here.

Posted for Fundraising

Grim Challenge Reaps Rewards

On Saturday 3rd December, Amy Winchester and Rosie Patuck (Team Geoggers!) took part in the Grim Challenge, an eight mile off-road challenge through mud and water over tough terrain on an Army training site. This (from past experience!) is not your average eight mile run and we cannot thank Amy and Rosie enough for putting themselves through the kind of ordeal that in general only the Navy Seals have to go through. They both performed admirably and completed the course in under one hour and fifty four minutes, crossing the finish line within seven seconds of each other (picture below)!

Through training and taking part Amy and Rosie have managed to collect a total of £138.50 both on and off-line, and if you meant to contribute but haven’t got around to do so just yet then please do make your way to their Virgin Money Giving page. We cannot thank them enough for their fantastic support and are glad to have been the beneficiary of their combined hard work – if any one else feels like getting fit for a good cause then we can certainly be relied upon to support you all the way. We might even join in!

If you would like to get involved with future Grim Challenges, as a fair few past fundraisers have, please see their website for upcoming events.

Posted for Fundraising, Newsletter Items

Newsletter: The Big Give Update

At 10am on Monday 5th December we began our biggest fundraising challenge ever. Through the Big Give Christmas Challenge, any donations we received online between 5th-9th December were increased by 50% thanks to the Big Give sponsors and donations could be Gift-Aided for an extra 25%! However, the total matched funding pot was limited and so not only did we have a challenge to reach our target we also had to encourage people to donate online as close to 10:00am as possible so as not to miss out!

The week was truly monumental. Our intense email campaign captured the spirit of Sabre and the challenge and we received 141 donations from both existing and new supporters. Despite a few technical hiccups on the Big Give website, we exceeded our target and raised £24,205 in online donations during the challenge week. With the matched funding, our pledge pot and Gift Aid, this equated to a staggering £45,850.20 – enough to fund half a sustainable kindergarten complex, and should enable us to unlock further funding in 2012.

We have been blown away by the support we have received for this campaign and to name but a few, Arup held a week long campaign by displaying the project in their reception area, Davis Langdon had run a number of events to raise their donation, Christadelphian Meal a Day donated a grant of £6000 online, Haymarket donated the money they raised at their industry awards ceremony and Amy and Rosie were sponsored to complete the Grim Challenge (see below).

We really couldn’t have achieved this phenomenal result without you – and it just goes to show… it really is the season of goodwill!