Two Coats Helps Single Mothers in Ghana

This project supports the development of education in Kansingo, a rural Ghanaian village. Kansingo is in the north east of Ghana, close to the border with Burkina Faso. It has a five month rainy season and a seven month dry season.

Low levels of agricultural productivity, over-population, high levels of illiteracy levels, unfavourable governmental policies are responsible for keeping its inhabitants living in perpetual poverty.

The population live off the land as subsistence farmers.  This provides enough food for nine months.  The three months from the end of April, when food stocks have run out, are known as the hunger season.  Food inflation runs to 70% in the hunger season.

The rainy season started early this year and the farmers planted their crops, mainly millet.

The rains stopped and the heat destroyed the crops thus prolonging the hunger season by about seven weeks.  Unusually heavy rain destroyed the subsequent crop.  The rain was so severe that it damaged the mud-made foundations of the houses.  As a result a number of houses fell in on their occupants resulting in some deaths and injuries. 

Information supplied by Parishioner Susan Hennessy who is presently volunteering with VSO in Northern Ghana.

Further background to this project

In January 2007 the Justice Group gave €5,000 towards the cost of a vehicle for the Single Mothers’ Association (SMA) of Bolgatanga, in the Upper Eastern Region of Ghana.

Two of our parishioners recently visited the SMA where an Irish girl, Susan Hennessy, is a volunteer development officer the SMA.

The joy of the single mothers to the news that people so far away as Ireland wanted to help them was indescribable. These are the most marginalized people in the most marginalized area of Ghana.

The Single Mothers Association was formed in 1998 by two sisters Madame Stella and Madame Faustina. They realised that those turning to them for help were all single mothers.

They recognised the need to empower single mothers to cope with the social, economic and emotional challenges while single-handedly parenting their children. The mothers and their children often suffer from malnutrition, very low school attendance, high school-drop out rate, high infant mortality and streetism.

The organisation is based in Zuarungu, a few miles from the district capital, Bolgatanga, in the Upper East Region, one of the poorest regions in the country. Some 85% of the Northern population are involved in high risk farming as their main source of income, employment and food.

The region suffers a hungry season from April or May until the harvest in July. In 1983 there was no harvest and at one stage such was the plight that mothers harvested undigested grain from the excrement of animals.

The single mother is the most marginalized in a society that is itself marginalized. The association has 720 members and there are a further 300 single mothers in the region. The main contributing factor to single motherhood in the Bolgatanga district is created mainly from a Fra Fra tribal traditional practice, ‘yi-yienzaba’ (sister-in-bed).

Where a family has girls only, one is kept from marrying. A partner from the same tribe is selected for her to breed male children. This ensures the continuation of the family name and lineage. They cannot marry as both are from the same tribe. The biological parents have no rights to the children.

As a general rule these mothers will not marry as they are seen as impure. Single motherhood also arises from pre-marital sex and rape.

The SMA’s greatest achievement has been to get the chiefs and elders to ban the practice. It will take many years before it ceases completely.

The specific objectives of the association are:
• To support members to initiate or operate viable and sustainable
income-generating activities.
• To provide and promote access to education and good health, including
family planning, HIV/AIDS & STIs prevention education.
• To lead an advocacy against harmful traditional practices and policies
that discriminate against single mothers and widows
• To providing counselling services

The organisation has 6 staff members (not all paid) and two international volunteers.

The climate is sub Saharan, the land scorched by the sun and incapable of sustaining milk producing life stock. The terrain in outlying districts is so rough that only trucks or 4x4s can cope with it. The initiative to fund a vehicle for the SMA came from an incident when Susan and a pillion passenger, carrying raw materials on her head to the SMA Centre, fell while fording a river in the rainy season.

The Rice processing co-operative run by the SMA is its most successful income-generating project. The recent visit from the parish to the SMA rice processing centre established that a pick up would increase their profits by 50%. When the weekly income is the equivalent of €8 a week, a 50% increase is significant.

It takes four days to process a sack of paddy rice, that is rice raw from the farms. A hired truck and crew take the rice from farms many hours distant to the processing centre. The rice is boiled in big pots, spread out in the yard to dry in the sun. It is then thrashed in a tiny mill and then teams of single mothers go through the rice grain by grain manually to pick out imperfections and stones. It is then bagged in domestic sized bags and brought to the market on the heads of the single mothers.

The SMA vehicle of choice is a pick-up with a twin-cab as that will also enable the association to bring people and educational aids to meetings. At present its transport needs are met by pedestrians, one motorbike and seven or eight bicycles.

Fund raising for the vehicle is now complete and it is a successful running project. Thank you to all its supporters.

Ghana - Kansingo School Project
 

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