Reflecting on my transformative journey with CorpsAfrica, the past two and a half months since my deployment have been marked by significant milestones, deep learning, and challenges. Post-deployment, I engaged with various community-focused groups both within and outside the community. This interaction provided an opportunity to connect with community stakeholders and explain the modus operandi of CorpsAfrica.
The immersion experience gave me hands-on insights and a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by the community. Participating in social events such as naming ceremonies, enskinments, weddings, festivals, and funerals, teaching at the local school, conducting household visits, and undertaking community transect walks helped me integrate well into the community.
The warm welcome and resilience of the community members touched my heart. Despite their challenges, they opened their doors and shared their stories with me, leaving a lasting impression. Through community meetings and facilitation, I have built strong relationships and worked hand-in-hand with community members to address their unique challenges.
During this immersion, I undertook activities such as forming a literacy club, where I led children in word pronunciation, word formation, breaking down long words into short syllables, and encouraging them to write new words in a “Word Power Bank” notebook. Additionally, I established a health, environment, and sanitation community club to tackle the filth in the community. Through these club sessions, I engage the children, teaching them CorpsAfrica’s development approaches and concepts, and instilling in them the importance of volunteering and service.
Other integration activities included community mapping for asset discovery, conducting a seasonal calendar exercise to understand the community’s yearly activities, and resource mobilization and soap-making as alternative income-generating opportunities.
Throughout this immersion journey, I encountered challenges that tested my resilience and problem-solving skills. Overcoming the language barrier and the need to employ practical methods to explain CorpsAfrica’s development approaches—focusing on the sustainable use of community-based resources with low-cost projects to achieve lasting impact—made me stronger. This was particularly challenging because communities in northern Ghana are accustomed to NGOs implementing projects without considering community contributions, unlike the CorpsAfrica community-led development approaches, such as ABCD and HCD.
Living and working in the community has deepened my sense of empathy and enhanced my ability to adapt to different cultural sensitivities.
