I started work at AFAWI in the beginning of February 2010 and my first few tasks were to read and edit research proposals and write articles on pertinent issues facing women and children in Ghana. The first article that I edited for Philip was about the stigma and discrimination associated with HIV and how it affects people living with HIV. After I finished editing the report, I then constructed an article about how women disproportionately suffer from HIV as compared to men. I contacted media houses, including the Daily Graphic,
and sent in the article for publication. Unfortunately, that article was never published in the newspaper because I lost contact with the people at Daily Graphic. When I went into Accra to speak with publishers about the rates for publication of articles, they said that there would be no charge for articles, only for advertisements. I received the news editor's contact information from the Daily Graphic, as well from the Public Agenda, and working with them once I had their personal emails and phone numbers proved to be much easier. I advise the next intern to try to receive the personal contact information of as many publishers or news editors as they can it makes publishing articles for AFAWI much less stressful.
I continued researching and writing articles on women and children, namely how they are disadvantaged in Ghanaian and African society. I think that the articles I wrote should have gone on the AFAWI website, because it would have given the public a sense of the kind of issues that AFAWI is working on. For instance, the article on menstrual management practices of adolescents in Ghana is something that most Ghanaians are not knowledgeable about. Since only the women and oil article got published in the newspapers, it would have been strategic to put the other articles somewhere on the AFAWI website.
I was simultaneously working with Krissy on the Teen Club at Taifa Community School. We found that one of the hardest parts of orchestrating the Teen club was setting up meeting times and following through with the scheduled meeting times with the headmaster and teachers at the school. Unfortunately, the Teen Club got off to a late start because it took many visits and many phone calls before we could actually come up with a date to meet with the students. One of the first times we presented to the children, we realized that many of them were interested in joining the Club and seemed very optimistic. By the time we had one of our last meetings with the students on dating and relationships, there were substantially fewer children present. The time of year proved to be very problematic for us; the students went on vacation in the middle of April, and before that they had exams to take during the times we would usually meet for the Teen Club. I think that in the future interns should continue to work hard on setting up weekly meeting times for the Teen Club, perhaps even bi-weekly meetings in the case that the students are unable to attend one of the two scheduled times. Also, it was very helpful to have the teachers' contact information, rather than the headmaster's, because the teachers were easier to contact and knew more about when the students at Taifa would be available for us to come.
While Krissy and I prepared for our weekly meetings at Taifa Community School, I was also gathering information and preparing for the Gender Justice Forum on The Ghana Domestic Violence Act and Contemporary Forms of Gender-Based Violence. Going to the forum gave AFAWI an opportunity to speak out about some of the projects that it is working on regarding women's rights and gender violence; I spoke about Teen Club at the forum as an example of how AFAWI is addressing issues of gender-based violence among adolescents in Ghana. Also, the conference proved to be a good way of collecting contact information. I gave the AFAWI contact information out to some workers at Africa Legal Aid and other organizations around Ghana.
One of the last projects that I worked on was AFAWI's Women and Oil project that addressed the issue of gender in the oil industry in Ghana. I researched all of the provided documents on the oil industry and the government's plans for encouraging local participation and local content of Ghanaians in the oil and gas industry; I realized that there was much rhetoric about getting Ghanaians and Ghanaian companies to be the driving force behind the potentially booming oil industry, but there was not much description of how women will be included. I wrote an article entitled “Women in the Oil Industry Promote Social and Economic Development in Ghana” which was published on the AFAWI website, in the Public Agenda Newspaper, and on the NGO News Africa website. In order to reach the publishers and have them publish the article, I had to call them numerous times and follow up on previous conversations. Eventually, my contact people pulled through and the article was published. I urge future interns, again, to obtain the personal phone numbers of publishers and keep calling them until articles are published in the papers. Also, perhaps interns in the future could be responsible for responding to comments that AFAWI receives on some of their articles. At the bottom of the article there of the article there could have been a note that read “for more information, don't hesitate to call or email the AFAWI office for more information on their Women and Oil Project.
Since the AFAWI website is one of the only ways that people and other organizations can access information on their projects, it was very important to update the website with what was currently happening with the projects. I worked with Calys, the website technician, and sent him an updated project overview of the Teen Club, as well as an abbreviated report on “Sexual Maturation and Menstrual Management Practices Associated with School Girls in Ghana”. Krissy and I worked together to produce reports and updates to send to Calys because most of the information on my computer was lost when it was stolen. Also, I had a meeting with Calys and Philip in which I described the ways that the website could be redesigned to increase readership and popularity on the internet. Updating the Project section was our main concern, as well as a gender redesign which makes the website appear more attractive and “reader-friendly”. Funding for the website is limited, so perhaps the next interns could work on fund raising for redesigning the website.
The fund raising project that Krissy and I completed at AFAWI was for the Teen Club. We contacted organizations and people at home in America and informed them about the Teen Club and its students. Many people and companies were eager to donate, and so when we received the donations we purchased school and art supplies for the students. The students were on vacation when we received the donations, so I delivered them to the AFAWI office and Krissy will make the donation to the school once it is back in session. I think that fund raising is a task that interns can easily get invested in, so that could be one for their main tasks in the future. Also, fund raising is often time simply a matter of publicizing issues; there were people who are willing to donate money, but sometimes are not aware of where their money will be going and how it will be used. In this case, it was important that Krissy and I specified that the money would be going directly into the Teen club.
I hope that I was able to contribute to AFAWI a much as I gained from working there; I took my enthusiasm working for AFAWI and put it towards finding an internship at a women's and children's organismic in Washington, DC. I will be working at True Child in DC this summer, and I will continue to look for fund raising opportunities that will help AFAWI reach its goals
