I did my service learning at the Village of Hope in Gomoa-Fetteh, central region, Ghana. We were a team of four students including myself, Sappah Yahaya, Ekow Nyameye Spio and Ayishetu Seidu. The primary motivation for choosing the Village of Hope has been that we all appreciate efforts geared towards providing quality education for disadvantaged children in deprived communities. As such, we decided to pull our skills together to contribute to this social cause that the Village of Hope has embarked on.
Going into this service learning, I revisited my SWOT analysis to review my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Obviously, I knew I had to work on my weaknesses and threats if I were to truly make an impact in this community. Of course the Village of Hope is an established institution and has its own ways of accomplishing tasks. And so, this service learning for me, was not about going to create something new. It was about giving all that I have to support the work there. Thus, we discussed with Araba Saakoa Amuasi Adjei, our contact person, to identify the areas that we could make our skills useful. We were offered accommodation, but we had to plan and budget for food.
We did some construction works, including laying slides of clay bricks, and constructing a bridge and a gutter. Even more, I learnt how to mix, fetch mortar and concrete. I learnt a great deal of team spirit from this experience. Construction is multipart and requires multiple skills to get