The Visit

As promised, yesterday we were able to visit the communities of interest to us and we found things that shocked us and we believe will be shocking to you as well. Life deals us all so many hands and sometimes we feel we are unlucky. But truth be told, we may Be unlucky but others are 'unluckier' and we need to seriously lend a helping hand to them. seriously and urgently.

There are a a few observations that we would have to share with you. The first of these is that some the communities we visited were so poor that their chiefs had made them orphan communities. What we mean by this is that the chiefs of these communities do not reside in these communities. they have left the communities and are residing elsewhere primarily because these communities are too poor to be able to provide enough to satisfy them. This revelation was indeed an eye opener.

Also we observed a general lack of job opportunities in the places we visited. generally these communities were farming ones that had no other source of income. So when the farming season was off, the resorted to doing manual jobs in the cities, just lazing about or in extreme cases armed robbery. One individual told me plainly and frankly that us has to rob just to eat so he is very polite about it.

The most striking observation we made was that these communities were still living life as if it was in the 1950's. It was almost as if we had been transported by a time machine back into time. The buildings, the lifestyle and even the food looked at least seventy years old. the was a very real disconnect between life as we know it and what we saw. And that underscored severely the need for helping hands.

For us, our concern is the youth and the children. These are the future of those communities. we are working on strategies to improve their lives and you will surely hear from us very soon.

Till then keep being helping hands.

TODAY.

Today we the helping hands are taking a trip to our adopted village of Donyina to attempt to familiarise ourselves with the conditions there. We will be back with the pictures for you.

Who We Are

When Kwame Nkrumah said that the time has come for the African to manage or mis-mange his own affairs, he meant it. In his mind, it was time for all of us to stand up, put our hands to the wheel and own our development efforts in all spheres. That was the vision of the founding father of our nation and today, we of the Barbara Amissah Foundation have also come up to step up and be counted.

We are not the most privileged people in society and we have not made it. We are yet to see the world and experience the many things that generations before us have seen. We are not extremely wise beings with superhuman abilities. We do not claim to have the solutions to all problems in our society. We do not even claim to have the solutions to our own problems let alone that of others: in short we have a long way to go as individuals.

But should we wait and solve all these problems or issues before we lend a helping hand? should we wait and hopefully succeed in our chosen endeavours before we lend a hand to those who urgently need it? Should we hope and pray to discover some strategy of formula of a sort before we can reach out to those who need our help now? Should we stay in our corner and watch people become desperate and destitute by the day?

We are humans and our humanity enjoins us to lend a helping hand now though we have needs yet to be satisfied. Our humanity does not permit us to wait and succeed before we attempt to help others. We are humans and our humanity kindles feelings for the plight of our brothers and sisters now so we act now. We are humans with feelings, a people with a clear vision and course of action. We are helping hands.

WE ARE THE BARBARA AMISSAH FOUNDATION.

We are a group of youth who have taken it upon ourselves to help the underprivileged in society through education. We have decided to help contribute towards the education of our brothers and sisters who have not been so lucky both in the formal education system and through skills training. we have decided to sacrifice our resources, time and brains to achieve these goals and we hope you come on board to assist us.

HOW WE DO WHAT WE DO.

We are of the view that we have to help ourselves us people of one nation and especially as youth. we believe that we do not have to wait for people from other lands to come and help our own poor. We also believe that we do not need millions before we can start anything and so we work with whatever we have. the key is commitment and dedication.

As at now, we are helping some school children from the village of Donyina in the Ashanti Region of Ghana through school. On a yearly basis, we provide shoes (2 pairs), exercise books (20), school bags (2), school uniforms(2), text books and pay extra classes fees for each of these children. We first met the group as a set of cobblers in the Streets of Kumasi, working to make ends meet. Upon further derogation, we realised they we school children who were trying to find money to stay in school. surprisingly, the amounts of money the needed ranged between 7 cedis and 25 cedis on a yearly basis to sustain them in school. we thus took it upon ourselves to provide these materials for them if they promised to stay in school and that has been our work ever since.

How do we raise the money? We contribute a bulk of it ourselves and we also task friends and parents to contribute towards our cause. We have not broadened the program because as at now, we do not have a fool proof method of accounting for monies generated through fundraising but we soon will.

OUR AIM

Our aim to to become successful. We define success as making someone else's life easier because we have lived and we want to touch the lives of many of such persons in Ghana through our projects. we hope that through providing these materials for these children, the will have the peace of mind to stay in school and progress educationally. We hope that through are yet to be launched skills training programs, some persons will be able tom provide for themselves and their family. We hope that through all of these programs of ours, may people will have hope in society and go on to lend helping hands to others.

OUR PHILOSOPHY.

Stated simply, our philosophy is to use money for what it is intended for. There are so many NGO's in Africa that have grown and become so huge that 66.6% of monies given them goes towards the sustainment of the organisation itself rather that towards helping people. We do not want to become such organisations. We want to use the money to help the people who need it and not some organisation that we have built. To this end, we keep matters as simple as as they can be but ensure accountability and probity.