Sabre September 2011 News issue eight
Reg Charity # 1105489
Akwaaba KG Teacher Training The summer is always full of exciting developments and goings on both within the Sabre office and the communities where we work. As ever, this summer has seen a number of education and infrastructure projects in fifteen of the villages in which we work, thanks in a large part to our school expedition teams. We have also begun work on developing a kindergarten teacher training programme with the University of Cape Coast - something that will continue to progress over the course of the next academic year and that we hope to report more on soon. Expansion plans into the Western region are afoot with the completion of a Needs Assessment and a formal relationship has been established with the Shama District Assembly. This is something we’re particularly excited about and we hope to start work on our first sustainable kindergarten school in Shama during January 2012. What follows is a selection of things that have been going on over the last quarter. Thank you, as always, for your continued support in helping us to keep growing and enabling us to have a wider impact in Ghana.
During July, Sabre held a two week intensive training course for KG teachers from six schools in the KEEA Municipality. The course marked the first step in the development of a longer term training and support programme for untrained KG teachers, a
central theme of Sabre’s Whole School Improvement Programme. The course was extremely well received by the teachers, and we are now working to develop a two year training programme which will be accredited by the University of Cape Coast.
School Expeditions collective thank you to everyone who helped make the summer such a success – notably Beth, Erin, Mike In all, the student teams completed 19 projects, with and Thompson from the Ghana team – thank you! school playground construction, classroom refurbishment, library renovation and IT labs all featuring in a diverse and incredibly positive series of projects. Feedback from students and teachers alike has been very positive, and we would like to say a huge on World Challenge or Wilderness Expertise trips.
This summer was Sabre’s busiest yet in terms of school visits, in addition to three of our own teams from Lord Wandsworth College and Weydon School, Sabre hosted a further 8 teams travelling
Shama
and the Shama District Asssembly, located in Ghana’s Western Region. The success of our building Shama is a relatively small district, but early signs all projects in Dwabor, and now Ayensudo, has sparked point towards a positive interest from neighbouring relationship between ourselves and the local districts, which offers us government. the opportunity to expand our field of operations. This For two weeks during July, has led to an exciting new partnership between Sabre Sabre staff teamed up with
counterparts from the District Assembly to carry out a Needs Assessment, funded by Webb Fontaine Ghana Ltd. The purpose was to identify which KG schools there require the most urgent repairs, or in some cases total reconstruction to create an acceptable learning environment. The results have confirmed the extent of the challenge. However, we are confident that by working in close partnership with the local authorities and key partners like Arup and Tullow Ghana Ltd, we can offer hundreds of children of Shama the best possible start to their education.