The Guides’ visit has now taken place and was very successful. The girls and leaders worked very hard at King Jesus Charity Home and decorated 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and the large hallway, with help from some of the older children and 5 other volunteers who were visiting from USA, New Zealand, Norway, UK and Malaysia. New toilets were installed and the old bath is about to be removed and replaced with a shower. Friends of the Ghanaian Children’s Trust in Newcastle, many of whom are past or present members of Girlguiding or the Trefoil Guild, knitted and crocheted blankets for the children’s beds and these made a colourful addition as well as keeping the children warm at night – Kumasi is in the midst of the rainy season and the temperature has been very cool most nights. The Guides had raised more money than was needed for their trip and this has been donated to the orphanage to complete further work, eg to fixing all the broken beds, carrying out the work on the new shower, finishing concreting the yard around the girls’ house, tiling the floors in the dining hall and sick bay and fixing mosquito netting at the windows, and mending broken tables and chairs in the dining hall so that all the children can sit down together to eat. The Guides also donated bedding, clothing and toiletries which were very much appreciated. The lockable cupboards proved too expensive so this is a project that has been put on hold for the time being until sufficient funds become available.
The Guides also found time to play with the children who taught them some Twi words (Twi is the local language), as well as games and dances. They entered into discussions about social issues such as the importance of education. On their last day at KJCH, they joined with visitors from the USA to form a football team to play against the girls from KJCH – the orphanage girls won 3-1 but the visitors scored the first goal after just 2 minutes! The Guides’ visit was judged a great success and has brought enormous benefit to the staff and children at KJCH as well as to the Guides. By raising so much money to enable jobs to be done at KJCH, the Guides have freed up the Ghanaian Children’s Trust funds to pay for more children to go on to higher education. The new school year is about to start and several children are hoping to progress to colleges of further education or university – their Senior High School exam results will be published soon and are eagerly awaited.
The girls are delighted with the decoration of their rooms
New blankets brighten up the beds
History of Guides Visit
In July/August 2014, 10 young women aged 14 to 20 and 3 adults from Girlguiding Newcastle will join Jean Edusei in Ghana for 3 weeks to work at King Jesus Charity Home. Their project will be to renovate the girls’ house at the orphanage. All the rooms need decorating and new bedding, which the Guides will provide. In the meantime GCT will be connecting a water supply to the house, repairing broken toilets and washbasins, repairing the old septic tank and connecting the toilet soil pipe. Also some of the rooms need plastering and the electric wiring needs to be upgraded. There are no cupboards or wardrobes in the house, so GCT will be employing a carpenter to install lockable cupboards so each girl will have a safe place to store her private possessions. Many of the girls don’t have a decent mattress and some sleep “top to toe” to share mattresses.
One of the girls’ rooms at KJCH
