WORK CONTENT AND DESCRIPTION
Children in Ghana have school holidays from the beginning of August until the middle
of September. Unfortunately, many of the children come from poor families and have
little or no resources to entertain themselves during the Summer holiday. To help
families who struggle to find someone to look after the children, or can't afford
anyone to care for their children while they go work, Travellers set up a free Summer
Camp for the children. We provide equipment and materials for games, competitions
and general fun stuff and we also make sure they get a meal every day.
The children love the Summer Camps - they win prizes! The prize for our volunteers
is the big grins across all the kids' faces :-) One of the obvious activities will
be sports - as many varied sports as possible - plus various other children's activities,
such as:
- Any ball games, like Football, Cricket, Basketball, Rounders or Netball
- Frisbee games
- Dancing - Ghanaians love to dance, so putting together a dance concert or dance
competition would be fun
- Drama - Informal Drama productions is another activity that can be initiated - and
all kids love play-acting!
- Music - teaching them to sing, to play an instrument and perhaps to put together
a concert to be performed at the end of the holidays
- Magic tricks, juggling or circus-type activities
- Simple games like hopscotch, skipping, hula-hoops
- Arts & Crafts - here there are many options.
- Any creative activities, like face painting
- Reading from story books
- Or anything else your imagination can dream up that will amuse the children.
The kids learn to use English at the same time, so they not only have fun, they
also
benefit from the activity. These activities also benefit the children by improving
their team-work skills, social interaction and building their confidence.
The Summer Camp takes place in the grounds of one of the local schools in Kwabenya
and is for children from all around the area, including other schools in the community.
Kwabenya is a small town/suburb about forty minutes drive outside Accra city centre
and a place where many of our teaching volunteers are based.
You may work for only a few hours a day, or you may find that you want to devote
more time to the children. The school remains open during the holidays because they
are also running extra-curricular academic lessons for the children who need them.
However, during the holiday period it is likely the school will have only one member
of staff present as the rest of the staff are likely to be away on holiday. For
this reason you will have the opportunity to become quite involved in the structure,
running and development of the Camp, which will require you to work on your own
initiative for a lot of the time.So being creative is a must.
You may work with large or small groups of children, so you need to be diverse and
organised, but you are encouraged to utilise any skills or passions you have, whether
these are playing sport, music, drama or just games. Past volunteers made a real
difference by introducing a fun and creative way for the children to express themselves
and learn about new things. You’ll be rewarded by how much fun the children will
have!
So if you haven't got anything planned and you're free for a couple a weeks
or longer this summer, why not come to Ghana and have fun with the kids.
SCHOOL HOLIDAYS:
Dates for the 2015 school terms (semesters) are as follows:
- Term 1: 6th January – 9th April
- Term 2: 5th May – 30th July
- Term 3: 2nd September – 11th December.