I MADE IT
Basic School
It’s been three years since we started the I MADE IT programme with some selected basic schools in coastal Accra. The first batch of our basic school pilot project are in their first year in the Junior High School (JHS). Initially, there were seven girls from the Bishop’s Girls’ School (BGS) and nine boys and girls from Chorkor Presbyterian School. Only four girls from BGS and two girls from Chorkor Presby have MADE IT to the JHS level. Chorkor Presby has no Junior High School so we have moved the two girls from Chorkor to join their counterparts at BGS. The first cohort is now made up of six JHS 1 (Basic 7) students at BGS and the second cohort (made up of five girls) are in Basic 6 at John Wesley Methodist Basic School. We are yet to draw a third cohort from a basic school in Chorkor. This time, the basic school should have a junior high school.
I MADE IT entails Character Building Sessions, Vacation Exercises, Educational Trips and Community Service. These are four modules that define our programmes. Ultimately, our students turn out to be resilient, refined, resourceful and responsible adults.​​
Character Building Sessions goes on once a week throughout the term with our basic school learners. We engage the children at break time while they are in school and under the supervision of their teachers.
These sessions mostly complement what they are taught in the classroom. Ice breaker games or questions enables the students to relax and actively participate in whatever lesson we have for the day. It also stimulates our conversations such that the learners express themselves very well and we get to know them better. Most often than not, we put aside our prepared lesson for the day and flow with our conversations.
Vacation Exercises keep the girls busy during the holidays. A few puzzles, riddles, spelling and wordsearches, mental mathematics with quick quizzes; reading comprehension, grammar, punctuation and spelling exercises keep them from mischief and prepare them as they go back to school. We also go through these vacation exercises with the learners during our character-building sessions.
Educational Trips enhance student learning. Some of their science, history, art and craft lessons are brought to life. It is interesting to note that these children live close to historical sites and cultural establishments but have never visited them. We therefore began our educational trips by visiting the Osu Castle and the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum. There are so many interesting places to explore in Accra before we venture into other regions. Ghana is blessed with so many interesting historical and cultural sites.
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Community Service is an area we are yet to explore with the basic schools. It could be creating beautiful gardens for their various schools or recycling of plastic waste.
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Tertiary Students
We continue to mentor and nurture our learners in the tertiary institutions via Zoom because they are in different universities in the country. We no longer go through the four modules with them. Individually, they reach out to us with their academic challenges. We therefore create a platform and discuss these and other challenges with them. We also look for internship opportunities from their respective industries. Some of them are also encouraged to pursue their masters’ programmes either in the country or abroad.​​
