I came for a month to teach Math in a local school in Ghana and received amazing support from the Atlas volunteer organization. First few days I was guided by one of the organization workers on the local culture and visited important sites in Accra. Great way to settle in this new country.
Later I travelled to the rural area where I met the teachers in the school I volunteered. Everyone was super nice through all the experience and I had a place to bring my unique ideas. I feel a strong connection to the people of Kwahu and hope to visit there soon.
In general, This experience was above my wildest expectations and I could write much more about it but I'll just say that you won't regret. For sure.
What would you improve about this program?
I'm not a big fan of the traditional food in Ghana but I managed to find other solutions.
Response from Atlas Volunteers
Thank you very much for taking the time to complete this Cindy, it's really useful for us to be able to monitor and maintain standards as we go.
I've ran through your development points with my team of Libby and Frank who is now taking care of the volunteer housing, it's a tricky one in regards to the cleaning as it falls ultimately on the volunteers to take care but it's a fine line between us parenting them to enforce a cleaning schedule and the volunteers as a team producing this. Of course as you can imagine this really depends on who you are living with in the house at that time but I have notified Frank so at least he can offer an example cleaning schedule as a suggestion to future volunteers.
In regards to the fridges and kitchen equipment, as you joined us over the free placements it was a difficult balance for us. We need to ensure the budget permitted covers the accommodation rent, utility bills, maintenance and fuel for transport to projects due this we didn't have the luxury of being able to buy everything we would have liked in the housing in the ideal world but as a fairly new organisation we hope that in time these develop and people add to the kitchen little by little as they go. (The tupperware was actually provided by previous volunteers). Also large electrical appliances such as fridges etc are unfortunately generally more expensive here so it's difficult to balance along with maintaining a sensible electricity bill.
I'm very happy to read that you would the airport collection was useful and appreciated and that you had such a nice time at the placement site which you remember so fondly. Once again thank you very much for taking your time to help us develop and please do let us know if there's anything we can help with.
Take care,
Sam