Bismark's Blog

ICS (International Citizen Service) is a great programme where opportunity is given to young people encouraging them to challenge themselves to change the world in a positive direction. This is enhancing growth, poverty alleviation, community development, sexual health education, women empowerment, helping grow local businesses, livelihood, community integration of the less privileged etc in Ghana and other parts of the world.

For me; Bismark Odum, volunteering with International Service on the ICS programme has being a very great experience as well as challenging. My project – Non Formal Education Division (NFED) project, is in Savelugu Ghana. I am a stranger in this community since it is my first time here. However, I have come to love the community’s peaceful nature apart from the frequent power outage. As a member of the fifth cohort on this project, we have being working over the past nine weeks to ensure six cooperatives who are into rice production and processing, soap making and shea butter production work together as a team and putting away all differences. This we believe will help them meet the aims of the cooperatives. We continue to ensure these cooperatives which are located in Jana, Balshei, Kukuo, Naprisi, Sahakpalugu, and Manguli get access to loans to buy equipment needed to work with. We also help to solve their transportation issues as well as getting access to quality water needed for producing the good quality of products into the market. Through radio awareness raising and various training sessions, we are making a positive impact by helping the cooperatives get vibrant leadership, putting in place sustainability plans, ensuring the cooperatives take and keep proper and up-to-date records. We are demonstrating great commitment to helping the cooperatives improve quality of their products and link them to prospective buyers or get a reliable market to sell their products in order to generate more income. Amidst many challenges, our activities are yielding positive results which we trust will last to benefit generations yet unborn.

Aside project activities, we have been able to educate the community on sanitation. We educated the people on: the need to keep the environment clean, health benefits of washing hands after visiting the toilet, avoiding open defecation, proper refuse disposal and teaching food vendors the need to cook in a very clean environment to avoid cholera outbreak, diarrhoea, typhoid etc. We have also engaged Savelugu M/A Junior High School students to educate them on personal hygiene. These are among the many activities we have undertook to enhance community integration alongside community development.

One great opportunity of being a volunteer on the ICS programme is the cross-cultural exchange experience of being and working with UK volunteer counterparts. This is an opportunity to learn and share from each other. I am learning how to live and work with people from a different cultural background. My commitment to personal and professional development aims at discovering my potential and developing skills in the area of building effective communication, leadership, collaborative and public speaking skills. I am improving my report writing skills and more importantly, am showing great commitment towards contributing to community development.

I have had some farming experience with my host family. I decided to join them to go and harvest beans. It was my first time harvesting beans; my experience was wonderful and memorable. I love to eat the Ghanaian bean dishes, Waakye (made of rice and beans) and Red Red (consisting of beans, fried plantain and palm oil) but never knew how to harvest the beans. Even though the sun was shining with high intensity, we managed to harvest three large sizes of jute bags between the hours of 9:00 am to 3:00 pm on Saturday. One thing I love about my host family is their love and concern for our well-being as well as their readiness to serve us food. I am enjoying these opportunities and encouraging the youth between the ages of 18 to 25 years to volunteer on the ICS programme.