Health and Education Projects in Ghana: Pavlis Honors College

• Women's Health Education: Many girls in Ghana miss school or are forced to use unsanitary methods when faced with their periods each month. Some girls resort to using unsanitary rags or chunks of old mattresses when they reach that time of the month. The focus of this project will be the education on how to create sustainable, reusable and sanitary feminine hygiene products so as many young women as possible can continue going to school each month. For three years the Women’s Health and Education project has been occurring in Ghana with great success in multiple villages. This project occurs by multiple workshops in different communities being put on to teach young women how to create reusable and sustainable tools for menstrual cycles. The goal is to provide enough education so that these communities can continue spreading the word and creating these tools while Pavlis Institute students are away. All communities visited will have invited the team so we will not be “stepping on any toes” culturally speaking. The team has the assistance of the Women of Pearl nonprofit organization who focuses on educational topics such as this in Uganda as well as locals.

• Children’s STEM Education Project: Fun activities on health standards and STEM applications for local village children will provide an interactive learning experience and will demonstrate how important these concepts are. STEM education in Ghana is largely lecture based and not interactive. By providing these children with interactive activities, we plan to inspire a new way of learning that challenges the norm. The team will be leading various educational activities for local village children regarding different health STEM applications. Educational visits will also include interest peaking activities around Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics tapping into the team’s technical backgrounds.

• Children’s Public Health Project: Previous Global Leadership teams have found success in interactive activities showing the difference between the use of soap and water as opposed to just water (or not washing hands at all) in the removal of germs. There may also be a few other activities incorporated.

• Raspberry Pi Project: Raspberry Pi's are small portable computers that can be used to teach many things including programming, graphic design, networking and collaborative project work. We plan to bring Raspberry Pi's to the Community Center in Babianeha for use in teaching their children and community more about technology and prepare them for an increasingly technical world. We plan to bring Raspberry Pi's to the village of Babianeha for use in teaching their children and community more about technology and prepare them for an increasingly technical world.

• Hospital Equipment Graveyard Revival: Medical supplies were purchased and donated a few years ago. Last year’s team spent time working to “revive” some of the equipment at one of the local hospitals, however, there is still more equipment that was broken, and probably more that has broken, that we would like to try and “revive” during our time in Ghana.

• Affordable Heart Stints: We would work with a local hospital in Ghana to get heart stints that they would be able to use at an affordable price.