Scottish Catholic Observer

Next month, Dr Mary Higgins, a retired GP from Stirling, will embark on her fourth visit to Ghana, her destination being Kpandai in the northern region of the country and a ten-hour journey from Accra, the capital. There, she will join volunteers who make similar journeys to assist in the rapid growth of the charity Let Us Shine which is in its fifth year of operation but which has already made enormous strides in transforming the lives of children in this impoverished part of Ghana.

Dr Higgins (right) is a parishioner of St Ninian’s (Holy Spirit), Stirling, and its twin parish of St Margaret’s, Raploch, has been very supportive of the charity. Her family have also forged strong personal links with the organisation since its inception and indeed a new classroom bears a plaque of dedication to her late husband, Dr John Higgins, a paediatrician, who expressed the wish that the children of Kpandai should be helped in every way possible.

Charitable beginnings

This charity had its beginning in 2004, when a young pharmacist, Fiona Marra, then based in Yorkhill Hospital, made a visit to Ghana. Scheduled to last five weeks, it stretched to 18 months, during which time Ms Marra saw the needs of the children in this impoverished northern area and was inspired to help them. She returned to Scotland with a firm project in mind, sought the help of friends and family in fundraising, and thus Let Us Shine came into being. A young doctor, Paul Higgins, based at that time in Yorkhill, was one of the people who visited Ghana at Fiona’s behest and saw the needs of the children first hand. He became a trustee of the new charity.

Kpandai is a small town situated in the very poor northern region. It is surrounded by eight rural villages, some of them remote. Families scratch a living of sorts from the cultivation of plots of land. Yams and groundnuts are the main produce, but it is not farming as we know it and there is widespread poverty. Families live in small, round mud huts and have few possessions. Children, who help on the land from the age of three, sleep on the ground, and, if they’re fortunate, on a sleeping mat. When Let Us Shine came into being only one of the eight villages had a clean water source. Clothes were washed with stones in the nearest river.

Life is very hard for the people, and especially for the children. There is significant incidence of malnutrition and allied diseases, malaria, the constant risk of snakebites and scorpion stings. With a national average of one doctor to 23,000 people, the landscape of health is a bleak one. So too are educational prospects. All children have to pay to attend school in Ghana. Prices increase as levels of education move upwards. The government contributes towards primary education but uniforms and school materials must be paid for. In Ghana’s northern region, fewer than one in five children have a primary education. Fewer than five children out of 100 have any chance of secondary education. Schools are few and far between. Where they do exist, class sizes exceed 100, of which 70 of the pupils are boys. Families are large and where perhaps one educational opportunity arises, a boy is selected in preference to a girl. In the case of families living in outlying rural areas, there is simply no educational opportunity of any sort for the children.

Focus on education

Let Us Shine focuses on education, not only to achieve numeracy and literacy, but to extend into everything from social skills, through the arts and Ghanaian culture to health education. In educating girls, they are providing the prospect of a sustainable future for the extended families of such pupils, the prospect of a secure future for the girls themselves.

The education provided by Let Us Shine is broad based and designed to reach out to the wider community, to encourage self-sufficiency, to lay the foundations of a better life for the families of Kpandai and the rural area beyond. This vision of Ms Marra has inspired aid offered from many Scottish sources, all of it passing directly into the charity and being used for a well-planned programme of expansion. Rotarians, Catenians, schools, private individuals, those who sponsor individual children… the list is long and varied. Fellow parishioners of Dr Higgins in Stirling continue to raise funds in aid of the charity to give strong support.

These efforts have resulted in a charity fully operational in Ghana for only five years having secured a 17 acre site on which are built primary classrooms, dormitory buildings for 100 pupils, a kitchen and store, a dining building with water and electricity supplies now available on site and accommodation for volunteers. Part of the site is cultivated for the growing of a variety of crops such as yams, maize, cassava and peppers. Mango and papaya trees have been planted and yielding plentiful fruit. Tomatoes, onions and cabbage have been added to this impressive list of produce. There are cooks who prepare three meals a day for the pupils and a housemother Hava, who looks after the boarders. Selection of pupils concentrated on girls between seven and twelve who had no formal education. Boarders are those who come from the outlying eight villages. They speak English as their main language but usually have, in addition, two local languages.

Things move fast at Let Us Shine. At first, the boarders slept on the floor of their dormitory, on sleeping mats and covered by mosquito nets. Now, to their delight, they have bunk beds and also proper desks in their classrooms. All of these were made using local labour, as was the construction of the buildings on the site, bringing benefits to the district as a whole. This, combined with the farming of the land around the school, the introduction of a wide variety of crops and the use of the project’s grinding mill extended to neighbouring farmers to help process their crops, brings obvious and immediate benefits to the people of the area.

At the hub of all this activity are the pupils, who begin their school day with breakfast, followed by morning assembly. First, there is a prayer, then the singing of Ghana’s national anthem, followed by some rousing marching songs for an orderly progress into the classrooms. The children are attentive, eager to learn. The foundations of that learning are laid with the Primary 1 and 2 syllabus, which is based on the Scottish system. After school, the pupils have duties too. They are responsible for laundering their uniforms, for keeping themselves neat and tidy. They also mend holes in their mosquito nets when the need arises and help with various tasks at the weekend as well as having fun. When volunteers arrive, the children don national dress and perform a dance of welcome for their visitors.

The work undertaken by volunteers is wide ranging and reflects their own particular specialities. Dr Higgins concentrated on basic health education and first aid, including prevention and treatment of malaria. She had brought with her a supply of dressings and medical equipment, including a set of baby scales. The mother of the first baby weighed on the scales called her child Mary to mark the occasion.

Continuing to build

This year, the fifth fully operational year of the charity, fund raising is directed towards the planned building of high school (secondary) classrooms. Once these are complete, there will be six primary and three secondary classrooms and an IT/library building. There will be two dormitory buildings for boarders as well as the facilities already mentioned and the luxury of toilet and shower facilities. And then, of course, there’s the tractor. At present, it’s rented, but Let Us Shine want to buy it. That is an important purchase.

There will be a fundraising ball in Glasgow in October to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Let Us Shine. Ms Marra, who began the project, is now based in Glasgow, but remains as director. She makes frequent visits to Kpandai and is now married to her Ghanaian co-worker, Samuel Mawuena.

And Dr Higgins is busy preparing for her May visit to Kpandai, looking forward to meeting the children again and knowing that her luggage will consist of extra large suitcases packed with all manner of useful things, suitcases which will almost certainly bring excess baggage charges. When she gets there, she will feel very much at home in the accommodation building for volunteers. It has been affectionately named ‘The Higgins Hut.’

Meanwhile, Let Us Shine is shining very brightly indeed.

—Further information on Let Us Shine can be found at www.letusshine.org