JICA volunteers making strides in Ghana’s education system
The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), through its Overseas Cooperation Volunteers programme, is significantly enhancing Ghana’s educational system.
These volunteers use “visualisation and innovative methods” of teaching and learning skills to help the learners understand easily.
While on a media tour in the Volta Region, the Agency observed the impact that some of its volunteers were having at the Akatsi Demonstration School and Dzelukope Roman Catholic Basic School.
The purpose of the tour was to highlight JICA’s contributions to Ghana’s socioeconomic advancement in advance of the August 9th Tokyo International Conference on African Development.
The delegation witnessed how a Volunteer Teacher at Akatsi Demonstration School A, Ms Asuka Haga, taught deaf students creatively to improve their literacy and expression skills.
The class, up to eight students from various grades, three of them were in Junior High School, two were in class 6, the rest were in class 3 and 4, were being taught using the same learning materials.
At the Akatsi Demonstration School, the delegation witnessed how Ms Haga used blank cards to design some sign language figures and other learning materials and pasted them on the walls for the students to visualise it with easy.
She recalled that, when she initially started working at the school, the majority of the students were neither able to write nor express themselves, However, with constant practice and creative teaching methods, they were able to learn the fundamentals of reading and writing in English.
Ms Haga, who had been working there for over a year now, stress that she was happy that the students would now express themselves, adding that “Seeing their progress gives me so much joy, It is fulfilling to know that they can now read and write simple English sentences.”
The Headmistress of the School, Mrs Stella Sogbor, commended JICA for its assistance, stating that her teaching strategies had increased the pupils’ interest and motivation to learn.
She pleaded with JICA to deploy another volunteer to the school since Ms Haga would be leaving soon, adding that, “these students are learning more from her, they always want to see her, so because of that, they are always in school, for these reasons, I will plead with JICA to send us another volunteer to help these students.”
At Keta municipality, the delegation visited Daisuke Yasugi, another volunteer at Dzelukope R.C Basic School, teaching practical Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills.
Having been teaching for more than a year, Mr Daisuke use computer games to teach his students how to type and also use the computer to learn numerical, making his ICT lessons more interactive and engaging.
According to JICA, 43 volunteers were working in different parts of the country and in various sectors including education, health, agriculture, private sector development, and sports.
Since 1977, it has dispatched more than 1,600 JICA volunteers to the country, who worked hand-in-hand with the locals in the communities, to share ideas and bring positive changes to those areas.
BY CECILIA YADA LAGBA, KETA
