Episcopal Press and News
Driven to bring dignity to lives in Ghana
Episcopal News Service – Bolgatanga, Ghana. May 23, 2011 [052311-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
An image gallery accompanying this article is available here.
King David Ayamga makes clothes in the one-room Upland Shop in Anafobiisi near here in the northern Ghana state known as the Upper East Region. Using crutches to support himself, he cuts cloth for bright pink school uniforms for Bongo Senior High School. His iron, whose handle is wrapped in rags, is heated by charcoal. As he works he tries to make the case that with a larger annual loan, he could make and sell more shirts.
John Awinzo, made deaf by measles, stands in the hot sun in Teshie in northern Ghana and excitedly tells of how he learned to be a carpenter and describes in detail his dreams for his carpentry school where he teaches 37 disabled young men. Later he introduces visitors to his uncle, Apam Azure, in the older man's mango orchard in Soogo. Azure sells his mangoes each year, but he also knows that Soogo's children daily find food on his trees.
Veronica Mba stands with a quiet dignity before the visitors to her compound in the community of Adaboorobiisi. She summarizes the steps she takes to parboil and polish rice for sale. She walks briefly back to her home and returns with a copy of the election tally sheet showing how she was recently elected by a sound majority to serve on a local council.
In a dusty clearing near their school, 10 young women prepare to graduate from a dress-making program offered by the Sherigu Anglican Women Development Center. The women, who received diplomas and sewing machines as part of the ceremony held during a community gathering called a durbar in Sherigu, then posed in a line as local journalists took their photos.
Ayamga, Awinzo, Azure, Mba, the 10 young dressmakers and thousands of others Ghanaians in northern Ghana have changed their lives with the help of the Diocese of Tamale's Anglican Diocesan Development and Relief Organization. By some estimates ADDRO's efforts in the past more than 20 years have directly or indirectly touched close to 4 million people.
For the last six of those years, Episcopal Relief & Development has partnered with ADDRO. The partnership, Tamale Bishop Coadjutor Jacob Kofi Ayeebo said recently, has been fruitful and shows Ghanaian Anglicans "that we are not alone in the business of God and we all share that mission of God."
Ayeebo made it clear during a conversation March 28 in the Bolgatanga offices of ADDRO that the diocese is not in the relief and development business for humanitarian reasons.
"We believe that Jesus Christ came and asked the church to proclaim a holistic gospel, a gospel that has to do with the totality of the human person -- the spiritual aspect, the social aspect, the economic aspect, the political aspect, all are integral to the mission of the church," he said.
"Therefore we cannot be preaching about the good news of Jesus' love when people are suffering and don't have good water to drink, when there is poverty and diseases."
The diocese's efforts rest squarely on the premise of John's Gospel that Jesus came to the world so that people could experience abundant life, according to the bishop.
"We are not driven by humanitarian grounds," said Ayeebo, who is also the executive director of ADRRO. "We are driven by our Lord Jesus Christ's command that we are to ensure that people live dignified lives."
It is a challenge to practice this holistic gospel and bring dignity to people's lives.
"We are poor," soon-to-retire Bishop Emmanuel Anyindana Arongo said succinctly earlier in the day in his Tamale office.
Indeed, a third of Ghana's population officially lives in poverty and Ghanaians' life expectancy is just less than 60 years. Life is especially challenging in the Upper East Region (of which Bolgatanga is the capital) in Ghana's northeast where erratic rainfall and a short harvest season make for chronic food shortage. Here, malnutrition and child mortality rates are the highest in the country and malaria annually claims the lives of 22% of children younger than 5 years.
ADDRO's work has six themes. Its food security and livelihood programs began as an irrigation project in 1971 and now include agriculture training and assistance, micro-credit lending, vocational training (especially for young women and disabled people) and environmental protection.
The organization's water and sanitation program is centered in the Bawku West District in the Upper East Region of northern Ghana, and promotes community awareness of hygiene and sanitation, construction of pit latrines and providing potable water through new wells. The program also offers preventive health programs to complement those of a government health-care center in the area.
A collection of community-based rehabilitation programs began in 1979 with an effort to assist those suffering from "river blindness" (caused by an infection from a water-borne roundworm) and in 2006 grew to encompass people with other disabilities. Included now in the rehabilitation programs are screening, counseling, advocacy and community-educational support; mobility training, sight-restoration when possible and livelihood support via micro-credit projects.
ADRRO wants to help disabled people understand that "their disability is not their inability, they can still live a dignified life," Ayeebo said. The rest of a disabled person's community must also be helped to see that disability is not a punishment for sin, the bishop said.
Just as traditional attitudes about disabled people are in need of rehabilitation, so are ones about orphaned babies. The Anglican Baby Home in Bolgatanga, just behind ADDRO's offices, was established in 1986 to care for orphaned and abandoned children. Along with ensuring that the babies survived, the center also works to dispel negative traditional beliefs about them.
Traditional beliefs once held that when a mother died in childbirth, her surviving infant caused the death and therefore was a witch. Such an infant would often be abandoned. In addition, twins aroused suspicion. The two babies would be taken to the woods and forced to inhale smoke made from herbs and pepper. If they survived, they were considered to be normal, Ayeebo explained.
ADDRO's gender and reproductive health programs hope to end gender-based discrimination and violence. ADRRO currently focuses these programs on domestic violence. School children in so-called "gender clubs," community mediation teams, local and national police and local politicians are all asked to collaborate to end such violence, which Ayeebo said is common.
Noting that Ghanaian society "is more patriarchal," Ayeebo said ADRRO wants to confront "those practices that dehumanize women" and do not allow women "to live a life as created by Jesus Christ."
"We try to let people understand that domestic violence is a sin and it is wrong" and it is against the laws of the country, the bishop said.
ADRRO also is ready to respond to emergencies. In the past it has delivered food, clothes, medicine and materials such as roofing sheets and cement to areas hit by natural disasters. In addition, parts of the diocese and region have been plagued by disputes within or between local ethnic groups.
Finally, ADRRO and the diocese collaborate with Episcopal Relief & Development in the NetsforLife® program to combat malaria, as are other areas of Ghana. More information about ADDRO's anti-malaria work is here.
And, in addition to all of ADDRO's work, Arongo said, Anglicans in Ghana and Episcopalians elsewhere in the world ought to be united in prayer, asking God to "use us to influence [people] everywhere to give, and to accept the gifts – and use them."