GHEI's Annual General Meeting

The Chief and elders

Sunday night GHEI was pleased to invite key community members to our Annual General Meeting, at which we talk about the activities that we have been involved in over the past year. Special guests at this important event included the Chief and elders, church leaders and GHEI’s library board.

The evening began with a song of prayer led by a charismatic church leader with the audience joining in. Country Director Clement Donkor introduced our Humjibre staff, both local and Western, full-time and volunteer, and described everyone’s role within the organization. Following this, GHEI’s Humjibre staff recounted highlights of our work in 2012.

Members of GHEI's Library Board

Education Program Manager Happy Nkrumah was pleased to report that 43% of our Youth Education Program students received a high pass on their Basic Education Certificate Exam (a score between aggregate 6 and aggregate 15), which was considerably higher than the high pass rate at Humjibre Anglican Junior High School (6%) and the overall district high pass rate (28%). His satisfaction was even more evident when he informed our audience that GHEI has awarded 72 scholarships to date, and that so far 41 students have graduated from high school.

Next up was GHEI Teacher Ernest Badu, affectionately known as Saga – short for Sagacious. He explained the Early Childhood Education program’s policy of recruiting 60% girls and 40% boys as a way of addressing the numerous obstacles to girls’ education in Ghana. He also reported that this year we recruited 14 new students for the ECL program – children who need a bit of extra help to catch up to their peers in school.

Library Administrator Lawrence Donkor was next to speak, citing the encouraging statistic that our community library had welcomed more than 15,500 visitors in 2012. He described the way the library works, that it holds more than 5,500 books, and that it is open to the public six days a week for four and a half hours a day.

Health Program Assistant Mensah Gyapong elaborated on our malaria prevention program, reporting that in 2012, 353 bednets were mended and 571 bednets were re-hung in our communities. Next, Aggie Obeng GHEI’s other Health Program Assistant spoke about our Handwashing with Soap program. She reminded our audience that GHEI has provided five water tanks at schools in Humjibre and the neighbouring village of Muoho, and that we continue to support peer handwashing monitors to ensure that students wash their hands properly.

This topic led into a note on the community water borehole that GHEI opened to the public in June 2012, which has significantly reduced the labour involved in fetching water for community members.

After discussing our yearly Summer Serve and Learn volunteer programs and encouraging the community to welcome our Western volunteers warmly, the floor was opened to a Question and Answer session. Questions were all in Sefwi, and covered such topics as our scholarship program, sexual and reproductive health program, and community support for all of GHEI’s activities.

GHEI was glad to have a diverse cross section of the community of Humjibre present at this important meeting, and the evening came to a close after some words of encouragement from the Chief of Humjibre. We look forward to another successful year of serving Humjibre and neighbouring communities and take this opportunity to wish our readers the very best for 2013.

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