Report - to Ghana trip - Infobrief members

Invitation to the General Meeting

Dear club members and all other interested parties, after two exciting weeks we, Thomas Erkert and Daniel Gerlach, are back; Birgit Meyers-Carow, a member of the association, who did research in Sunyani last year as part of her master thesis, left earlier - after about a week. The first week of our stay was dedicated to the "1Bed4All(II)" project. In this context, we visited many medical facilities in and around Sunyani. The highlight of this first week was a workshop with representatives of the selected 16 institutions from the Bono region. Unfortunately, the beds had not yet been unloaded from the port at that time. Therefore, we had to conduct the training and handover of the beds that was to take place during this workshop without the actual beds. We will inform you about the current status of the project and further details in the context of the general meeting (invitation_general_meeting_2023_may_09) or on our homepage www.hita-ev.org. Another highlight of the first week was a video conference with the Design Thinking team of the University of Applied Sciences Mannheim, a student from Mainz and representatives of a small hospital in Fiapre, very close to Sunyani. For almost 90 minutes, the two parties had the opportunity to get to know each other, exchange ideas and question each other. We all had to deal with the current economic situation in Ghana. As is actually always the case, inflation and the economic crisis primarily affect the poor and poorest of the population. Prices have exploded, jobs have disappeared, and for many people the money is not even enough for the bare necessities.
Spontaneously, Daniel and Thomas therefore decided to directly support the young family of a long-time acquaintance. If you also have the desire to help families in need, please contact us(spenden@hita-ev.org). Your donation will directly support medical care and better education for the families of our long-time acquaintances who have fallen on hard times. On the Monday before Easter, we left for Ho at 4:00 a.m. in the morning. There we visited our project and cooperation partners on site and delivered various gifts and donations. It was very interesting for us to see how well our used but refurbished PCs are doing their job in the HITA Computer Labs. At our partner school, Mawuko Girls' Senior High School, for example, 22 of 30 PCs are still working after 4 years of continuous operation, and 4 are currently being repaired. In other words, our concept of operating with older but tropicalized equipment is paying off. Important features of the devices are, for example, large coolers and replaceable components. The Wednesday before our departure was dedicated to working with our partner organization the Grow Your Dream Foundation. With our colleagues, we not only visited facilities in the Waya district, but also hiked with them to a rather hard-to-reach village to learn about the work we were helping to fund. We were so enthusiastic about the commitment of our colleagues that we decided to agree to a joint pilot project. We want to support our colleagues in providing medical education using modern information and communication technologies.
What do we take home with us after these two intense weeks? Our ambitious project approach of creating a link between theory, advice, material aid and hands-on is more important than ever in the crisis. Without material aid, sustainable concepts in the area of education and training of non-medical staff, but also in the high schools, cannot be implemented. What was frightening for us was how demotivating a non-functioning political system can be for people. Salaries that are not paid or only paid with delays contribute to this just as much as a rampant and sometimes absurd bureaucracy. On the other hand, we are thrilled every time anew by the warmth and hospitality of our local partners and friends. We can learn a lot from the innovative power of creating something from nothing. Our bottom line is, we will continue to do everything we can to help these great people. Please continue to support us with your donation or win supporting members for HITA e.V.! Also feel free to use your networks and approach acquaintances and business partners to tell them about the work of our special NGO. Our fundraising campaign for the sustainable implementation and continuation of the project "1Bed4All" can be found here: https://hita-ev.org/en/1bed4all-ii-donation/ Thomas Erkert and Daniel Gerlach The official invitation to the HITA General Meeting on May 9, 2023 from 7:30 - 9:00 p.m. can be found here invitation_general_meeting_2023_may_09. Full members of the association are entitled to vote.