On Day 5 of our listening/learning trip to Africa, we visited the Tema General Hospital (a (RED)/Global Fund site), located 22 miles outside of Accra in the largest port, industrial city in Ghana. Built in 1954, the hospital is currently undergoing renovations in an effort to better serve the increasing number of patients. An eye care center was recently completed and the Minister of Health just announced plans to construct a new, modern maternity block.

These are some photos from a PMTCT (prevent mother-to-child transmission) program funded by the Global Fund. The PMTCT program at Tema General Hospital provides voluntary counseling, testing, treatment and services to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child.

-Morgana Wingard

Another on-the-ground post from the delegation traveling through Ethiopia and Ghana this week, this time from Maggie Williams. Learn more about the trip here.

There have been miracle days on this trip.  Yesterday, for me, most of the miracle took place at the Tema General Hospital in Tema, Ghana.  The hospital is a dynamic, living, breathing place, where women and their children are loved and taken care of.  Mothers with HIV find hope and help for both their lives and the lives of their children. Tema identifies women with HIV, gets them into treatment and helps them deliver and care for their healthy babies.  Maybe we just caught the Tema staff on a good day, but they make this very tough work look and feel like a labor of love.

Small simple counseling, testing, and treatment rooms line the hallways. Bigger rooms are used for waiting, dispensing medicine, and perhaps more importantly, for sharing the company of other women.

But particularly seared into my brain are the pictures of the Ghanaian women who are the nurses, doctors and technicians.  These professional women are master organizers.  They are customer service savvy, heavily invested in making things work for their clients.  They understand the emotional and economic challenges these families face.  They are the kind of women who post their goals along the walls and reach them.

I feel honored to have met them.

-Maggie Williams

An on-the-ground post from Tony Fratto, who is among the delegation traveling through Ethiopia and Ghana this week. Learn more about the trip here.

Today we visited a first-class Ghanaian pineapple-exporting farm and processing facility about 2 hours west of Accra.

It’s an 1800-acre farm, Fair Trade certified, exporting to Europe.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a U.S. Government corporation designed to work with some of the poorest countries in the world, is helping to provide capital and trade credits.  The farmers act in a cooperative, and we had the opportunity to talk to farmers from five of the largest pineapple farms.  The farmers explained that the capital supports the investment in the processing facility, which helps the farmers to increase production and add value for exports.

An important part of smart, effective development — which ONE is encouraging — is to have well-integrated projects.  In this case, the MCC’s support for expansion of the N1 highway (a critical road that connects farmers to airports, markets and sea ports) is coordinated with efforts to expand agriculture production outside of Accra.  The expanded highway will significantly reduce the time and cost of bringing ag products like these pineapples to market, which will increase productivity and competitiveness, and in turn, returns to farmers.

-Tony Fratto

Ritu speaking with a market vendor in Accra, Ghana

This week, Ritu Sharma, Women Thrive’s Co-founder and President, has been in Ghana and Burkina Faso, trying to learn about what life is like for women farmers, what their governments are doing to empower them, and what U.S. assistance programs can do to help. Accompanied by a team of Women Thrive staff, Ritu has met with local women’s organizations, such as their advocacy partner, Coordinator Coalition Burkinabe pour Le Droit du la Femmes (CBDF), a coalition of 15 women’s associations that educates Burkinabe women and helps them advocate for better economic rights. She has also met with individual women farmers, Burkina Faso government officials, and U.S. development agencies working in the country.
Read Ritu’s daily diaries and conversations with women farmers.

For most women in Burkina Faso, where almost half of the population lives below the poverty line, life is a daily struggle. Typically living in rural areas, most women have little access to ongoing education or potable water. Yet because they are the majority of farmers and are responsible for child care, Burkinabe women spend much of their day performing field work, growing food and crops for their families. However, despite this often grueling work, many Burkinabe women are not allowed to own the very land they farm, because customary often law excludes women from land ownership, preventing them from investing in the tools, irrigation, and seeds that would make their families better fed and their children better off. Learn more about women’s role in agriculture.

-McKenzie Lock, Women Thrive Worldwide

Cross-posted from our friends at the (RED) Blog who are currently travelling with ONE through Ghana. Day 4 of our listening/learning trip.

After an incredibly educational trip to Ethiopia, we have finally made our way to one of the four countries that (RED) money is working in – Ghana. Boy, it’s HOT here!

Today we’re planning on visiting facilities that are funded by the Global Fund and supported by (RED) – I’m really looking forward to seeing our (RED) money at work. (RED) money goes directly to The Global Fund which invests it in HIV/AIDS programs on the ground in Africa. We’re very proud of the fact that the every cent of the donation that any of our (PRODUCT) RED partners such as Apple or Gap sends to the Global Fund from the sale of a (RED) product gets to Africa –no overhead is taken out.

We are on our way to see two hospitals where we will learn more about HIV testing, counseling, and ARV treatment. One of the hospitals focuses on prevention of mother to child transmission and hopefully we will get to meet some of the mothers and their infants who have successfully completed the transmission treatment. More than 70,000 HIV positive pregnant women have received preventative antiretroviral therapy to reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission due to support from funds from the Global Fund and (RED) so this will mean a lot to us.

Our trip so far has been amazing. We have met so many people here that are affected by a variety of challenges and yet still stay so strong, determined and hopeful in the face of their adversity. Meeting them has been my favorite part so far. We’ll be reporting back later on today’s visits.

Molly @ (RED)

As in many African countries, children in Ghana often missed out on schooling because their parents could not afford the school fees or needed them to help work in the fields or the home. In 2004, Ghana started a free compulsory Universal Basic Education Program, which abolished school fees and introduced a National School Feeding Program. Much of this was done with the help of donor funding. Between 1999 and 2006, donor support for basic education in Ghana more than doubled. Ghana is now on track to achieve 100 per cent basic education enrolment by 2015. The removal of school fees opened school doors to the poorest Ghanaian children; school lunches have helped improve attendance and retention rates. By the end of 2008, 595,000 children were receiving lunches through the program, many of them eating locally produced food purchased largely by the United Nations World Food Program. Thanks to this combination of measures, Ghana’s net primary school enrolment rates for boys increased from 60 per cent in 2004-2005 to 84 per cent in 2007-2008. Enrolment of girls increased from 58 per cent in 2004-2005 to 82 per cent in 2007-2008.

-Nora Coghlan

As released from the White House yesterday, Obama will visit Accra, Ghana, on July 10 and 11. It will be his first trip to the sub-Sahara Africa as U.S. president. (His first trip to the African continent as U.S. president will be to Egypt in June.)

From the May 16 “White House Release on Upcoming Obama Travel:

“The President and Mrs. Obama will visit Accra, Ghana, from July 10 to 11. While in Ghana, the President will discuss a range of bilateral and regional issues with Ghanaian President Mills. The President and Mrs. Obama look forward to strengthening the U.S. relationship with one of our most trusted partners in sub-Saharan Africa, and to highlighting the critical role that sound governance and civil society play in promoting lasting development.”

(more…)

Hello from Accra, Ghana, where ONE is taking part in major meetings about aid effectiveness this week.

A team from our London and Nigeria offices is here, joining hundreds of others from government and civil society from around the world, to make aid work harder in the fight against poverty.

We know that effective aid is improving the lives of millions of people, but a slowing global economy and rising food and fuel costs makes it all the more important that every cent is spent well.

There are many ways to improve aid effectiveness. ONE, as part of a new group called “Publish What You Fund,” is concentrating on improving the quality of information on aid spending.

Without good information, planning for schools, hospitals, roads, sanitation and the other elements of development is extremely difficult. Citizens also find it very hard to hold their governments accountable. And without good information, it is impossible to be sure that resources are being used well.

In many very poor countries, up to half of spending on donor-funded development projects is done outside government. This is sometimes necessary if local systems aren’t in place, but this can also lead to a lot of duplication and waste of resources.

At the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra this week, (more…)

My sister Mallory recently returned from Africa, here is what she had to say.

-Matt Higginson, ONE Nevada Field Organizer

I just returned from a two-month humanitarian mission in Ghana, West Africa. I was there working mostly in the deaf schools, teaching students in sign language and facilitating teachers.

It’s hard to sum up the intense variety of emotions and thoughts you have while visiting a developing country – I saw many things that were difficult. Our students were often sick with malaria. They had cuts, sores and infections that couldn’t be cared for properly. Often they drank unclean, stale water which they collected from a nearby water source. While these are all things we consider terrible it was common life for them. Despite these conditions, it took only ONE of us to make ONE child feel smart, important, needed, and loved.

In addition to working in the deaf schools, I was also able to visit nearby villages and spend some time with the people in them. I learned of their culture, lifestyles, daily struggles, and will to survive. The experience was life changing, but perhaps the greatest insight I gained was that of the human spirit, its need to be loved and our obligation to fulfill that need and give children a chance to succeed. I’m grateful to know that the efforts of the ONE Campaign directly benefit the wonderful people I got to know. It is nice to have an outlet like ONE here in states to maintain my drive and energy to help improve the conditions in Africa!”

-Mallory Higginson

(Martin Edlund of Malaria No More joined President Bush’s on the Ghana portion of the president’s trip to Africa.)

It was a day of firsts for me. My first time meeting a sitting president. My first time racing through streets in a presidential motorcade. My first time seeing malaria education set to music.

President and Mrs. Bush made malaria a big focus of their stop in Ghana, where they were joined by American Idol Winner Jordin Sparks and Malaria No More. Sparks opened a noontime event at the U.S. Embassy with a Super Bowl-sized rendition of the national anthem that made the speakers whimper and moved patriotic listeners to tears.

President Bush took the mic to praise American Idol for raising $17 million for malaria during last year’s Idol Gives Back charity special and share some exciting news:

This spring, Fox and American Idol will once again appeal to viewers to help defeat malaria. On April 9th, the show will raise money to fight malaria in Africa and support other worthy causes in the second round of “Idol Gives Back.” Laura and I hope, and Jordin hopes, that America’s generosity will still pour forth, and we ask our fellow citizens to contribute to this worthy cause. (Applause.)

(Read the full transcript here, including the President’s shout out to Malaria No More.)

It was a short event – half hour all told – but plenty long for us to sweat through our suits in the soupy afternoon heat. “This reminds me of what it’s like to campaign in Texas in August,” quipped a glistening Commander in Chief. Still, he took the time to press the flesh with the hodge-podge audience of scruffy PeaceCorps volunteers, Ghanaian women in traditional dress, and Idol-loving tweens.

Lunch was served on the Embassy lawn flanked by mini-golf versions of the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Washington Monument while the bar offered bottles of Schweppes tonic in a subtle (okay, probably unintended) homage to the days when the quinine in tonic was used to ward off malaria.

From there, we raced off to Maamobi Polyclinic on the outskirts of Accra where Jordin and Mrs. Bush were greeted by a traditional durbar—a Ghanaian community gathering complete with song, dance, and umbrella-wielding day-glo chiefs.

Jordin and Mrs. Bush did a bed net demonstration and kids sang a malaria song withwith mosquito-wing choreography. It’s what happens when well-intentioned public health professionals try their hand at pop song. Sample lyrics:

From home to home
From school to school
Children are saying
Give us treated bednets
To keep us protected
But if malaria attacks
For lack of protection
Give us early treatment
To save our lives

Somewhere Simon Cowell is scowling fiercely. For my part, I’ll stick with Jordin’s single “Tattoo” which I’m rocking on my (Product)Red iPod as I write this.

-Martin Edlund, Malaria No More