Rachel in Ghana

It is the end of my first week in Ghana. I spent the first two days travelling from Accra to Tamale, the largest city in Northern Ghana. After having a day to explore the city and go to the market, I went to the Rural Enterprise Project (REP) Zonal office on Tuesday morning and have spent the rest of the week working there.

Standing at the bus station in Accra	Outside the REP Zonal Office (click pictures to enlarge)

REP supports vulnerable families, women and unemployed/underemployed youth to develop micro and small businesses. The program is currently in its second phase (2003-2011), which is a scaled up version of a very successful first phase (1994-2002) and is providing services across Ghana. The programs are run out of Business Advisory Centres (BACs) that work with local government offices. The services provided are all important factors for developing sustianable and compettive businesses and include ibusiness training, technical training and icreased access to financial resources. REP works with a variety of businesses (including soap making, fabric dying, metal tool manufacturing, honey production, etc.) based on local resources geared toward local rural, urban and export markets. From what I can tell so far, it is well planned and has been experiencing high levels of success.

Rachel and Rabi

As for my personal life, I spent the first few days in Tamale staying in the EWB house/office and now I am staying with a lady named Rabi, who works for Oxfam. Everyone in Ghana is very friendly. The house that I live in is in a compound, attached to other houses that form a square, with an open courtyard in the middle. All of our neighbours regularly drop by to visit. It is the rainy season and it has rained most days but after raining heavily, it stops and gets very hot. I’m happy to be here and excited to learn more. Next week, I will be going to Damongo, which is in another district close by. While there I will be working with another EWB JF at the local BAC

My name is Rachel Alexander and I am participating in the Junior Fellowship program with Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Canada.  For the next three months I will be working in Northern Ghana with the Rural Enterprise Project (REP). This program provides support to entrepreneurs who are starting micro-enterprises in Ghana. 

I grew up in Toronto and I am a Masters student at the University of Toronto.  At school, I am studying Adult Education and Community Development with a collaborative program in Environmental Studies.  For the last 6 months, I have been on 2 different internships.  The first was working at the EWB national office in Toronto, Canada. During this time, I was providing support to Canadian poverty awareness programs and communications related activities.  The second internship was with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Vienna, Austria.  At this internship I was working with the Cleaner Production Unit which provides support to small and medium businesses. In this position, my projects focused on Arab and African countries. From these experiences, I feel that I have gained some insight into an external perspective of international development and I think that the next three months will provide a very different point of view.   In this blog I hope to share what I am learning and capture some of the experience of living in Ghana.

If you are reading this and have any questions, feel free to post them and I will respond as soon as possible. ( Although, I will not have frequent access to the internet.)

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog and if you would like to know more about EWB¢s work please see the website at www.ewb.ca.

-Rachel