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REPORT FROM THE FIELD

GAP - Ghana: Field Report Fall 2005

October 2005 saw the Global Autism Project continue to develop its partnership with the Autism Awareness Care & Training Centre. So far, our work has focused primarily on improving the fundraising and administrative practices at AACT.

Two of the largest fundraising collaborations were helping AACT participate in local craft fairs and conduct a fundraising campaign for autism awareness month. AACT has participated in a crafts fair  Besides helping to raise funds for the centre by selling crafts made by the students, these crafts fairs were great venues to improve the visibility of AACT in the community and make the services provided at AACT more widely known. Complimenting these appearances was a complete redesign of AACT’s brochure, making it a more effective tool in raising awareness about autism and AACT.

A concerted fundraising campaign was done for autism awareness month. Information packets with a letter from Mrs. Quaynor and the new brochure were given to dozens of local businesses. In addition to raising funds this campaign created the templates for letters that AACT will be able to use in the future for soliciting donations from first time and repeat donors, as well as creating the follow-up thank you notes.

Helping AACT raise funds is only the beginning of the process to increase AACT’s capacity. GAP also worked with AACT to ensure that any funds raised were effectively utilized by improving the accounting and administrative practices at AACT. The system for keeping track of petty cash, as well as tracking the payment of monthly student fees was revamped to make the entire process of tracking incoming and outgoing funds easier to operate and more transparent. Other important steps taken were creating a daily attendance book as well as providing Mrs. Quaynor with one-on-one computer lessons.

Following the 2006 Paddle for Autism Awareness and other stateside projects, direct work with AACT continued in November 2006. Work in fundraising and administrative practices continues but GAP has begun to devote more energy into developing the education and therapy curriculum at AACT. To begin with a parent and caregiver training program is being developed. The program will be used for parents and caregivers whose children have just started at AACT, but it will also be open to the public.

Opportunities are being developed for the possibility of secondary projects with other schools and non-profits in the area. The network of opportunities looks to include the autism program at New Horizon School and the outreach programs a startup called Awaawaa2 would like to do. Though Awaawaa2 works primarily with children with hearing disabilities, they are looking to do projects that GAP is well suited to help with such as creating pamphlets to raise awareness of the resources and services available for families with a special needs child and a mobile clinic to increase awareness and bring health services to rural populations.

In preparation for volunteers the GAP staff is hard at work preparing the GAP apartment/office in Accra, ensuring health and security issues are adequately addressed, and developing the Ghana orientation program that volunteers will participate in when they first arrive in
Accra.

REPORT FROM THE FIELD

(Clare Gallagher and Leah Feuer)
Summer volunteers 2007