Update from Kathy

February 23, 2012

Today's work at Street Girls Aid with the leadership team was on messaging, mission and passion. We started the day with this question - "Please tell us about someone who made a difference in your life and what they did that made the difference" It was so moving that I would like to ask this same question to those who are reading this - and as you think about that person share the story with someone as a way of honoring that person. Thanks we are all just working to embrace humanity one person at a time!

Tonight PDG Cathy Smith and PP Kay Bliss and myself, PP Kathy Stutzman celebrated Rotary's 107th Birthday in true African Rotarian style complete with a 5 Club meeting that was planned to be 30 and had people flowing out the door at over 100, champagne, colorful African Rotary clothing - each year the District Governor designs a fabric based upon the theme for the year and Rotarians have clothing ...made of the District fabric - so it is very colorful and of course there was a birthday cake, fines for everything and some kind of raffle but I am not exactly sure what we were purchasing - our raffle ticket stated it was for a washing machine and dated 2008 - it was a good thing we didn't win, can't quite figure out how to get a washing machine into the overhead compartment. I was fined for taking pictures. We exchanged banners, laughed and of course, at the beginning of the evening the electricty went out. Really a great Rotary night.

Rotarians Gather to Talk About Engaging vs. Fixing

Accra area Rotarians were invited to a meeting hosted by the team to talk about a shift in a paradigm, a move from a " fix it" mentality to one of "engagement".  Several clubs were represented.  Some good information, meaningful discussion, and a wonderful response to Kay's solar lamps made for a great night overall.

Street Aid Leadership Developing a Plan

Street Aid staff in leadership spent several days working with Kay, Kathy and Cathy dreaming, believing and developing a plan for the organization.  

Facilitator Training for Street Aid Staff

Here are a few pictures of Kathy, Cathy and Kay in action. Selected staff were trained to be facilitators.

In the streets...

Here are a few pictures from the day (2/21).  These were taking on the trip described by Kathy.

February 21th - a blog post from Kathy

Today the sights and sounds of Ghana come to you from the girls working and living on the streets of Accra. We weaved our way through narrow alleys, through laundry, trash, shower houses, food cooking on porches in the rain and mud fighting against the river human traffic of the morning, animals and trotro drivers...interviewing teenaged mothers who work and live near the railway station in a city... of nearly 3 million people. We met several of them at the local movie house - a small dark room with no windows filled with wood benches seating close to 45 people where girls will pay up to 20% of their daily wages to get out of the rain - they pay extra to bring their babies with them. Movies and TV play all day long offering an escape - Ghanaian soap operas were playing when we entered. Here is what some of the girls told us when asked about what they dream, "I am happy because I get to eat each day - but yesterday when the rain fell it would have been nice to have a place for me and my baby to sleep out of the rain", "I want to learn a skill so that I can provide for my child" and "I want to learn a trade so that I can achieve something and become someone." It was an honor to bear witness to these dreams.

February 17th - a blog post from Kathy

Today we finished up a week of working with Street Girls Aid in Accra Ghana. The staff are impressive and inspiring and their dreams are moreso - I am in awe of what they accomplished this week. Kirsten spent time with the girls and it was great to hear them laughing and dreaming with their babies in tow - we are all learning so much. After a full day of work the sights and sounds of Ghana turned ...to congestion, traffic, the ocean, and Teshie where we saw full sized coffins in the shape of okra, a coca-cola bottle and a new one which the crafters were working on in the shape of the King's Seat. We went to the market and were mobbed by vendors selling their wares and Kirsten had a drum lesson which accompanied her new drum. Tomorrow we will leave the city for the a tour of Elmina Castle where the movie Amistad originated and hopefully Kakum Nature Park where there is a rainforest canopy walk that will have us suspended in the air 40 meters. Cathy and I were a great team this week facilitating, creating, innovating and training and the energy when we finished each day was electric which might explain why we are all having trouble sleeping. I wore my African clothing today and was greeted and treated like a princess - can't wait to try the outfit at home and see if I get the same reaction! Alright all - early day tomorrow.

Thoughts from Kathy

February 14^th from Kathy Stutzman

Today the sights and sounds in Ghana were almost beyond description, the smells and feel of the humid, dusty railways where teenaged working mothers live and work on the street with their babies on their back and at their side while carrying over-flowing heavily laden bowls on the tops of their heads filled with fish, water, chickens, clothing, sugarcane, plantain chips, donuts...and on and on. Wa...lking the rails and around the smoldering garbage piles in the hot sun, sweating in the mass of people who all seem to be going somewhere. Turning the corner through an alley filled with people washing, eating, cooking, sewing, braiding hair looking down as we pass into a courtyard guarded by heavy steel doors into a child care center with 160 children who mob us as we enter - some touching our skin others pinching it and asking us about the color. Some healthy looking, many not - but all excited to see us...and our cameras!!!! Oh the pictures... Sweat dripping and dust sticking we returned to the streets and interacted with as many as would talk to us while the field workers who were with us showed us how it is done - they were marvelous and extremely adept at their work what a great day of learning...beyond description really.

February 13^th from Kathy Stutzman

Today - what a day, in the midst of the heat and incredible work we took a short hiatus to purchase local fabric and have some clothing designed for us - can't wait to see what comes back. The Street Aid group has been a pleasure to work with and we have laughed a lot. Traffic is always a challenge, but gives us some time to sleep - or shop from the local vendors as they sell their wares - everything and anything to people passing in cars. We visited the Accra Rotary Club and I ran into some friends from both 2003 and 2005 trips here and it felt like I had never left. My GSE Team can be proud that they left such a favorable and lasting impression on such a wide range of people. We are out again early in the morning trying to beat the heat of the day, but the reality is that we will be out all day - tomorrow night, strategizing for the next day - this is great - something to do while I stay up all night! That's the report from Africa tonight.

February 12^th from Kathy Stutzman

We have been here for 24 hours and already it feels like we have been working for a week - really good work though. The travel to Ghana went well, we were met at the airport by Rotary Ralph who took such good care of us and we will be meeting up with him again tomorrow all 17 bags made it filled with material aid and tonight we made some awesome connections with friends from Accra. Our driver arri...ves at 8:00 in the morning and we hit the streets literally - we all feel very safe and ventured out for a little this afternoon - it is humid but the winds are cooling things down a little and so far we have not experienced the Harmattan winds that blow off of the Sahara. Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and well wishes - hoping to get to the blog tomorrow after our first full day…Oh - and I wanted to add what I must have said 100 times today - "I love my life" I am really one of the luckiest people in the world to be able to do something like this!

Blog Posting From Kay Bliss

2-14-2012

Today we met briefly with Vida, toured the Street Girls Aid House of Refuge, and then went to the child care centers (creches) that S.Aid runs for girls' toddlers while they are working as porters, cook's helpers, etc in the overwhelming market next to the train station. The train station is where most of them arrive in Accra from the poverty-stricken villages in northern Ghana, sent by their parents with an adult, or they want to come themselves, eager to seek a better life.  95% of the street girls come from poor rural villages to Accra - 5% are Accra natives, which means it's pretty impossible to eradicate the street children problem until the poor villages have more to offer.  Seeing the House of Refuge was really a wake-up call about how desperately they need money - they have room for 45 girls but can only afford to house 15 because they need to feed them, hire more staff, etc.  There is no running water but they have beautiful fixtures because the water for that whole area - a relatively nice one -  hasn't worked since a couple of months after they moved in 2006, so they haul their water 1/2 a block or use rainwater.  Most residents have a water truck deliver it, but this is a way they can save money. We met some of the girls and their week-old babies, and I was shown "Kay's room" - one of the dorm rooms that can house 12 girls.  The rooms demonstrated hard use and a tropical climate that is death to good paint jobs, but the girls seemed glad to be there.  The shocking thing for me was that the girls were . . . girls.  Young adolescents who remind me of playful 8th graders, but with week-old babies and no family around - it was a real reality check about how young they are, and what a difficult thing SAid is trying to do.

Then we went to the railway area where the girls live "on the streets" (or near the tracks, sleeping near the walls of the train station or by kiosks.  I was guided by Fred, the SAid field worker who spends 5 days a week, 7 hours a day meeting girls, talking to people in the area, making referrals, informal counseling, etc. - he was really sharp, and the girls brightened tremendously when they saw him and came up and talked.  I was surprised that the field workers were male, but they obviously are respected and are approachable.  The girls are referred to stay at the House of Refuge by the SAid field workers when they find pregnant girls, as well as from the Dept of Social Welfare, hospitals, or police when they have victims of abuse.   SAid pays for the processing fee to get them on national health insurance.  Sometimes it is hard for the workers to persuade the girls to go for care in the hospital because the hospital workers embarrass them by saying, "Look at you, you're very filthy!" so sometimes the girls prefer to use traditional midwives . (Note about street girls’ finances:  they make about 3 cedis a day (cedis are about 70 cents US/$1, so that’s $2.10 a day) - their daily expenses are renting a space on the ground to sleep (between 50 peswas and 1 cedi a night (there are 100 peswas in a cedi).  A meal of rice with a little vegetables is 1 cedi (hopefully they eat 2 meals a day), bags of drinking water are 10 peswas.  Buckets of water to wash their clothes cost 30 peswas and they need 3-4 buckets to wash their clothes.  A hot shower at the public showers and using the toilet is 60 peswas (40 for a cold shower).  You can see the problem with cleanliness if you do the math.

The creches (child care centers) are very modest dirt compounds with three rooms for about 80 children a day - 4 workers.  They get two meals made there, and are safe from the frequent accidents of unattended children in the market area with open drainage ditches, fires, lots going on. Not a lot of toys at the creche, and kids were very eager for attention.  Mothers pay 1 cedi a day, but there are some scholarships.  See the photos in the creche child care compound and also field worker Fred talking to a street girl with 16-month-old  who is a SAid "success story"  - she now has her own business selling hair items from a cart instead of carrying heavy loads on her head.

I will close with a list of the items we saw sold by the street vendors who carried their wares down the line of cars creeping along the clogged freeway, as we were waiting to get on an off-ramp (about 200 yards):  MP3 players, comic books, children tennis shoes, 2' x 4' gilt framed mirror, sunglasses, CDs, calculators, string bags, rosaries, hats , water, computer cases, eggs, belts, onions . . and one motorcycle driver with his buddy holding an auto muffler on the back, delivering it who-knows-where.  We're going to make some vendor's day when we get some Kleenex in kente cloth-designed boxes.  We need it because the harmattans (winds blowing from the Sahara that spread fine dust everywhere this time of year) really kick up itchy runny eyes and allergies.

Tomorrow we start our visioning, and strategic planning sessions with 5 staff directors - executive director Vida is really intrigued about having them come up with 20 second "elevator speeches" that they can tell people what SAid does, because they really need this as a beginning of their telling their story and for public relations here in Accra.

And we are off....

Team Ghana has left US soil and is in a short holding pattern before making the final leg of the trip to Accra.  Let the documenting of the adventure begin.

Kathy Stutzman

 Kay Bliss

 Cathy Smith

 Kirsten Lindbloom