First off I would like to let those of you who are unaware know why I even found myself in good ol' Africa this summer. Each year a group of BYU MPA students go to work on a couple of projects for local non profits. This year we had a market research project for IDE and a project analysis assignment for the LDS church concerning the Perpetual Education Fund (PEF) in West Africa.
A home in the Kente cloth weaving village.
A home in the Kente cloth weaving village. As you are about to see, we ended up having quite a bit of fun mixed in with our studies, but project work was the number one reason we were there. The IDE group was researching vegetable trends in the local markets to help farmers understand what type of produce they should be growing when IDE helps them to irrigate their crops (allowing them 3 crops a year instead of 2). There will be more about the market experiences to come...
My group was the PEF team (though we all helped out on both projects). I was able to interview potential & current PEF recipients, vocational school representatives, and PEF representatives for Ghana. The problem that PEF is facing is that students want to get a university degree, but it requires a lot of debt and in the end, there isn't a job infrastructure to support very many 'white shirt & tie' jobs. It is a sad situation. The PEF representatives wanted help looking into the program and seeing if the church should be encouraging vocational degrees instead of university degrees. At the end of the day, this is pretty much the answer, but there will be more on this later as well...
If the next blog posts start to look like journal entries, well...they are. Among all the other things stolen about an hour after arriving in Africa, was my journal. Life goes on but, I sure would love to be able to look back on some of the experiences I documented in that book, so now i'll start documenting my life all over the place so it can't be stolen in a backpack. On that note - here we are at the Police Station. It took me about 1.2 seconds to know I would never ever see my stuff again.
Jenny, Shanelle, myself, Dr. Agle, Sam and Ben all lost stuff on the bus.
When we went in, there was just one big room with a desk and a chair and one officer. There were two jail cells behind the desk with pieces of paper above them that said Male and Female, written with a sharpie. The female one looked empty, but there were quite a few in the male cell and they were very excited to see us...
Visiting the police station made me so so so grateful for our local officers, our laws that keep us safe, the men and women that devote their life to justice, the judicial system, insurance, and air conditioners (little did I know that the last one would be something I was reminded of constantly).
My group was the PEF team (though we all helped out on both projects). I was able to interview potential & current PEF recipients, vocational school representatives, and PEF representatives for Ghana. The problem that PEF is facing is that students want to get a university degree, but it requires a lot of debt and in the end, there isn't a job infrastructure to support very many 'white shirt & tie' jobs. It is a sad situation. The PEF representatives wanted help looking into the program and seeing if the church should be encouraging vocational degrees instead of university degrees. At the end of the day, this is pretty much the answer, but there will be more on this later as well...
If the next blog posts start to look like journal entries, well...they are. Among all the other things stolen about an hour after arriving in Africa, was my journal. Life goes on but, I sure would love to be able to look back on some of the experiences I documented in that book, so now i'll start documenting my life all over the place so it can't be stolen in a backpack. On that note - here we are at the Police Station. It took me about 1.2 seconds to know I would never ever see my stuff again.
Jenny, Shanelle, myself, Dr. Agle, Sam and Ben all lost stuff on the bus.When we went in, there was just one big room with a desk and a chair and one officer. There were two jail cells behind the desk with pieces of paper above them that said Male and Female, written with a sharpie. The female one looked empty, but there were quite a few in the male cell and they were very excited to see us...
Visiting the police station made me so so so grateful for our local officers, our laws that keep us safe, the men and women that devote their life to justice, the judicial system, insurance, and air conditioners (little did I know that the last one would be something I was reminded of constantly).
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