Ghana: Disability Program Volunteer Program.

Duties

As a volunteer on this project, you will work alongside with local staff to assist and support individuals/groups to participate in recreational activities, encourage and provide education on personal hygiene, help with behavioral management, provide a variety of therapies (according to your skills), do clean-ups, help with homework, help with arts and crafts, provide loving care and support.

Why?

Most typical Ghanaians consider people born with mental or physical disabilities being ‘cursed’. They believe the parents or a member in their family might have broken a taboo; hence, the disability is a punishment. There are instances where parents of these kids are advised to abandon their children in the bush for nature to take its course. Those parents who refuse to heed to this act have to struggle all by themselves for the upbringing of their special children as there would not be any support whatsoever from the relatives or friends. Moreover, there is a lack of resources or appropriate facilities in the communities to assist in providing proper care, attention or support for these special children. As a result, many of these kids are usually isolated, uneducated and become a huge burden. This situation has rendered most people with special needs in Ghana unproductive and to become beggars in the streets.

Fortunately, we have opportunities for volunteers to assist a few schools and centres in the central region that admit these unfortunate people and provide them with emotional and physical support that is to say therapy, counselling, formal education and job training, to enable them to become independent and useful to their families and society as a whole. These children are survivors. When you hear about their birth stories, the environment they live in, the situations they have been through, you would be surprised that they are still alive.