This is an archived news story, written on: July 7, 2009

By Luke Caley and Jon Dunkley, 20 June 2009

Alhassan Issah, blacksmith

We arrived in Accra last Sunday night and then moved straight up to the busy town of Tamale, in the north of the country, very early the following morning. The northern part of Ghana has far less rainfall and is much poorer than the south which is one of the main reasons we concentrate our support there.

Our first visit was to SimliAid which is working to empower rural artisans with tools and training. Simli means friendship in the local Dagbani language, and the organisation is certainly making many new friends in the communities of Nanton and Savelugu, some 25 miles from Tamale. This is the first year we have been working with SimliAid and already it is making an impact with its community-based training scheme.

Local members of the community are chosen to organise meetings four evenings a week and attendance is very high in an area where formal schooling has often failed adults. Activities are organised to help the communities to learn together on topics such as agriculture and literacy. However, the participants also showed an interest in learning vocational skills to help them through the long dry season. This is where Tools for Self Reliance has come in – to support training of tailors, carpenters and blacksmiths with local master craftspeople.

We were very impressed with the ways they are using their tools and new-found skills.

We visited a number of beneficiary groups and were very impressed with the ways they are using their tools and new-found skills to increase their businesses and provide vital services to their local communities. One blacksmith in particular, Alhassan Issah, earned Jon’s admiration when he showed us a home-made tap (the thread-cutting type, not the water type!) which he had made by forging a holder and fitting a high-tensile bolt: when the proper item isn’t available you have to improvise, and Issah rose to the challenge.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent with our partners Ghana Danish Community Programme (GDCP), which has been working for many years to provide training and information on health, human rights, literacy and numeracy, vocational skills, business skills, organic farming and beekeeping and many other topics. We travelled with GDCP to Karaga district, where we were faced with a large formal event staged in our honour by the community chief. We had to dress in traditional Ghanaian smocks and hats and dance to the drums in front of many locals who had clearly never seen anything so funny in all their lives. Neither had we, really!

Following this we were free to carry on with our primary purpose, to visit recipients of the joint project between GDCP and Tools for Self Reliance to provide tools and funding apprenticeship costs for marginalised young persons to enter trades.

There were many youngsters learning sewing, carpentry, block-laying and other trades, and all were very happy to have the chance to learn and build their own future. It was also an opportunity for us to support activities outside our normal range, for example hairdressing. Although we could not supply the equipment they need, we were able to support their apprenticeship, and GDCP managed to purchase some of the items it needs. It was particularly noticeable how much the whole community was in favour of the project and supportive of the participants, from the chief to the master craftspeople, the apprentices and their families.

Friday was ‘GYAM Day’. GYAM (or Ghana Young Artisans Movement to give it its full title) has a training facility in Tamale where it has been training disadvantaged young people in life skills, health issues, literacy and numeracy, micro-entrepreneurship and vocational skills in a range of disciplines. The students receive 6-12 months inhouse training, paid for by Tools for Self Reliance, after which they go to local workshops to learn from experienced master craftspeople. As well as interviewing many of the students, trainers and master craftsmen and women, several of the students’ parents came to express their gratitude and support.

We were also very pleased to meet a lady called Idrissu Asamawu, who received a sewing machine from Tools for Self Reliance back in 2000, via our former partner Action for Disability and Development. Since then Idrisu has opened her own shop in the central market and, together with a business partner, is very busy making clothes for women and children with no fewer than 10 trainees under her wing!