Community Service and a visit to an Orphanage

This past week has been an amazing experience for the group. We’ve all had the opportunity to teach in our own classrooms in three different schools. I (Kelly) have taught 9-12 year old girls at the Maltiti School. My goal was to teach math and English. I’ve noticed that the girls have improved tremendously on their math skills and are now working with numbers in the thousands. Their English has also improved. We are working on recognizing nouns. This experience has taught me that any amount of time spent in the developing world if spent wisely, could help to improve the lives and education of young children.

My fellow co-blogger Amanda has been at the Junior High School teaching children who are between the ages of 11-14. She has taught Social Studies and English. It has been a real challenge for Amanda to teach because of the language barrier. However, she recognizes that spending the past week in the student’s classroom will make an everlasting imprint on their education. The entire group concurs that teaching in these schools have been a life changing experience.

After lunch we visited a government sponsored orphanage. It was difficult for us to witness the destitute conditions that the children live in. Many of the kids faced attention deficit where there clearly were not enough staff members in place to attend to the children. The second one of us would put a kid down, they would immediately begin to cry and reach up for us. Although we could not make a real difference because of the short time we spent at the orphanage, we hope that the brief visit provided enough attention until the next volunteers arrive.
After the orphanage we headed back to the Maltiti School for Girls to paint the classrooms and the exterior of the building. It was rewarding to help in any way possible. While it may seem like a mundane task, we know that our efforts will be appreciated. Our evening drumming and dance lessons were nerve wracking because it was our last rehearsal before our big performance for the village. We all hope to make the local crowd proud and stay tuned to hear about the show tomorrow!

In addition, we would like to thank the Zeta Psi Nu Delta interest group for collecting and shipping needed supplies and canned goods to us in Tamale. These supplies arrived today and we will distribute them to the rural villages on Monday.