The Ark Foundation is a huge organization in terms of the scope of services they offer to Ghanaian women and children. The two main divisions of the NGO are (1) the Women's Law and Human Rights Institute (WLHRI), which runs training programs on leadership, human rights, gender equality, social development etc., and offers legal advice and free legal representation, and (2) the Anti-Violence Program (AVP), which provides counseling, a 24 hour crisis hotline, the only women's shelter in Ghana, and a lot of outreach projects regarding safe sex to stop the spread of AIDS, prevention of child and spousal abuse, etc.
I intern in the WLHRI. So far I've written two letters requesting institutional affiliation, one to the Coady Institute in Nova Scotia and one to Spelman College in Atlanta, because the Women's Law and Human Rights Institute (WLHRI) here at The Ark is seeking accreditation as an educational/training institution, and to become accredited in Ghana (and internationally) they need to be affiliated with an already accredited institution. Then I did some research on other social justice-based NGOs called "Ark" so that we can send out invitations to become affiliated with each other. Then I drafted a letter The Ark can send to future interns regarding what they can do to prepare, and what to expect and so on. Then I did some research on the electoral process of Ghana, which required a fair amount of background research into the history of Ghana to understand it, and currently I'm drafting a proposal for the National Endowment for Democracy to fund a program to promote Ghanaian' women's participation in government and democracy. I've also done some administrative type stuff - make lists of contacts, joined a couple of the project officers here while they made a presentation on Women's Human Rights to the female officers at the Fire Service and handed out pamphlets.
It's pretty dry, considering my personal and scholastic interest is more in the area of what the AVP does (and direct contact with women/children), but they recently lost the financial support of their major donor (Ghana is now considered on the "almost developed" end of "developing" and many donors are withdrawing funding) so they need major help finding grants elsewhere. So, I may not be on the "front lines", but I'm still helping, I think.
The Ark Foundation has a website (www.arkfoundationghana.org) if you want to take a look, and feel free to ask me questions! With my shared internet connection here at work, it's difficult to upload photos on Blogger and Facebook, but I promise I'm taking TONS and I will share them all when I get back!
Hope you're well! As always, I miss you.
Much love,
Emily
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