Website Contest will deepen the Global Teenager Project in Ghana
Jul 30 2002, Ghana [GH], Education
In June 2002 GTP’s project manager, Nele Blommestein, visited Ghana to complete the project formulation phase in collaboration with Ebenezer Malcolm, the coordinator of the Ghana Learning Circles and head of Rescue Mission Ghana. The result is proposal to add a website contest as a learning activity to the existing Learning Circles, which will deepen the impact of GTP Ghana.
During Nele’s one-week mission, she visited several schools and participated in discussions on the future possibilities for GTP Ghana. Kees Hommes, IICD’s programme manager for the region, accompanied Nele and Ebenezer on their visit to three schools in Accra. Kees was pleasantly surprised by the curiosity of the students and the commitment of the teachers. Nele and Ebenezer also visited the Cape Coast region to meet with the regional coordinator Daniel Obuobi, who handed over his tasks to his successor.
Ebenezer has been involved in the project as the GTP country-coordinator since 1999. Since the beginning he has acted as facilitator of the Learning Circles, in which he is now joined by Sithabile Urenje in Zimbabwe. Ebenezer has been thinking about expanding the GT project for some time now. Since Ghana is a focus country of IICD, he has the opportunity to do so with the help of IICD and IICD’s local partners.
Ebenezer came up with the idea to deepen the learning experience of GTP in Ghana with more educational activities. The GTP Ghana project proposal includes plans for a 6-week website development contest for the classes which participate in Learning Circles. The students will build a website on the theme of their Learning Circle. For example, if a class participated in a Learning Circle with the theme Globalisation, this will also be the subject for the website.
An important part of the project will be teacher training. Most teachers have very little experience in building websites and will need training in order to support the students. Teachers who are still at the starting point of learning ICT skills will be offered a basic ICT skills course. They can join the advanced training at a later stage.
At the end of the 6-week period, a high-profile awards ceremony will be held with the aim of attracting media coverage. Mrs. Korantema Adi-Dako is bringing ideas forward of how to approach the media and make the project widely known to the public.
The next step is to finalize the formulation of the project and propose it to IICD, which will consider granting a starting subsidy for one year. In any case, it is a unique and challenging deepening of the project!