What We Do

BHA shall operate within a number of broad programme areas of which includes:

Promotion of Quality Basic Education for the Peri Urban and Rural Poor

This includes:

i) The construction of school infrastructure (school building units – primary and Kindergarten with staff rooms and store rooms), school library buildings with computer rooms, school canteens, toilet facilities for pupils and teachers, etc. these will provide the enabling environment for teaching and learning to take place in the community schools where these facilities are lacking.

ii) Supply of teaching and learning materials such as text-books, reading books, exercise books, pens, pencils, rulers, erasers, teaching aids, chalk,
and all such materials which are required to ensure that the children are able to learn without any hindrances.

iii) Organising in-service training for the teachers in the schools to sharpen their skills, forming reading clubs in the schools to encourage the children to read and organising reading competition for the schools we support to give the children and the schools the desire and edge to read.

Education Development Support (EDS)

This involves selecting of brilliant but needy children from poor rural and peri- urban schools and supporting them in various ways to enable them enjoy going to school and learning. The support will include:

i) Providing school uniforms with its accompanying footwear and bags.
ii) Supporting these children with school materials such as text-books, reading books, notebooks, exercise books, pens, pencils, etc.
iii) Giving these children some little money for feeding in school.
iv) Supporting extra classes for the chosen children to build them up academically.

Village Infrastructure & Community (Self-Help) Improvement Programme

Water

In spite of the progress that has been made to ensure that children and families every part of the country have access to safe drinking water, data has shown that 76 per cent of households are a risk of drinking water contaminated with faecal matter.

Sanitation

Major challenges affecting basic rural sanitation delivery include a lack of planning and coordination of programs aimed at improving sanitation. This is due to limited staffing in the various institutions and limited resources for capacity building and implementation of programs.

As of 2015, only one rural household out of ten was using improved household toilets, while three in every ten practiced open defecation. Not a single district in Ghana has achieved an open defecation-free status.

There is no clear urban basic sanitation strategy and plan in Ghana. Various approaches and interventions in urban basic sanitation are not effectively coordinated or monitored. Unlike rural communities, social mobilization for sanitation and hygiene promotion in urban settlements is quite complicated due to its cosmopolitan and multicultural nature. However, sanitation is a social and public good whereby every citizen needs to participate in discussions and decisions that will benefit everybody.

Hygiene

The Ghana Demographic and Health Survey reveals that while more than half of Ghanaian households have a designated place for washing hands, only about one household out of every five has water or other cleansing agents available at home.
(source: www.unicef.org)

To reduce the spread of preventable waterborne diseases in our selected communities BHA will focus on the following:

i) Construction of toilet facilities.
ii) Construction of recreational and community meeting centres.
iii) Provision of potable water.
iv) Supporting the communities with other initiatives they may come up with.

Vocational Skills Training for Self-Employment Programme

One of the crucial factors facing most developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, is youth unemployment. The types of higher education institutions in Ghana include 10 public universities, eight technical universities, seven university-level professional training institutions, and other polytechnic institutions. Overall, there are 138 tertiary institutions, including colleges of education and nursing training.

In Ghana, over one hundred thousand youth graduate from the country’s tertiary institutions each year and set out to look for white-collar jobs but never get the jobs.

Those who also complete secondary education but are not able to continue to tertiary education due to either lack of funds or lack of capacity to pursue formal education keep increasing every year. Some of the youth decide to embark on journeys through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea to Europe to seek greener pastures but, unfortunately, are not able to make it through the journey and lose their lives.

To reverse or at worst minimize this social canker, BHA plans to support the youth to gain entrepreneurial skills to become self-employed through the following:

Fabric creation (batik, tie & dye), fabric design (sewing).
Hairdressing, pedicure and manicure, massaging and facial treatment, etc.
Tailoring, Seamstress
Carpentry, metal works, masonry and other activities that goes with building, mechanic work, car spraying, bakery and other catering services, etc.
Weaving of kente (Ghana’s most expensive traditional cloth) as well as other vocational skills which the members will like to acquire.
Electricals, electronics, surveying and architecture

These we believe will create employable skills for the youth to be self-sustainable in order to come out of poverty.

Rural Micro-Enterprises Development Promotion

This will include providing support to the target communities in the areas of:

i) Processing and selling food such as kenkey, gari, boiled rice and stew, fufu and soup, etc.
ii) Processing of palm oil and palm kernel.

Alternative and Sustainable Livelihood Provision for the Poor and the Marginalised

While Ghana is a much less populous country than large sub-Saharan states like Nigeria, Ethiopia, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it faces the same challenges in providing economic opportunities and education to its fast-growing population. The country’s populace has doubled within just three decades, from 14.2 million people in 1989 to 28.8 million in 2017 (World Bank). At 2.5 percent, the present population growth rate in Ghana is far above the global average. The country is gaining another 700,000 to 800,000 people each year—a trend described as “alarming” by some observers.

Agriculture is the backbone of every economy. Most of the youth who are unemployed shall be engaged in the area of agriculture. BHA intends to train the youth and provide jobs for them through the following:

Rearing of live stocks such as goats, Pigs, sheep and grasscutters.
Poultry
Farming of food crops and cash crops
Bee keeping
Supporting the activities of farmers with inputs and skills training.

Research, Training and Advocacy

BHA intends to:

i) Carry out simple research activities to understand issues that may occur within communities in order to address them appropriately. These activities will be conducted as and when necessary. The research will not be scientific in nature but will take the form of simple social science research aimed at clarifying issues that may arise in the target communities. Such issues may include why some children stay at home instead of attending school, why some families remain perpetually poor, and why certain diseases frequently break out in some communities, among others.

ii) Undertake basic training for members of the community that would need, as a follow up to the researches that will be done.

iii) Advocacy will also be undertaken to support those who are marginalised or underprivileged in the society or even for the entire
community/communities which may be required. This will be informed through the simple researches that will be done.

Development Education, Information and Communication

This will include:

i) Provision of education/awareness creation or sensitization on all developmental issues in the target communities.
ii) Provision of community libraries.
iii) Provision of computers and internet facilities that will enable members get access to global information.
iv) Support some community members to acquire communication gadgets such as simple mobile phones, simple radios etc. that will help them find information and communicate with the global world.

Village Church Development for Community Development

i) Support the development of churches in the various communities. This will include the support to evangelism, support the building of church
buildings, providing Bibles, sponsoring crusades and follow-up programmes, etc.