Welcome to our Edwenase Christmas Card Action - Appeal for support

Edwenase Rehabilitation Centre Staff and Students

For more info about Edwenase please visit our new website: www.ercghana.blogspot.com

Even great potential and enthusiasm needs money to start off, so as Edwenase's 5 volunteers from Germany(Lena and Markus), Ireland (me, Damien), Italy (Mattia) and Poland (Dorota), we decided to make use of the art skills and amazing creativity of the students to generate funds for their different needs in the centre.

With Christmas approaching it seemed like handmade cards for friends and family at home would be worth exploring.

The teachers of the Centre came up with the idea of creating more "Ghanaian" cards bearing Adinkra symbols, typical for the Ashanti region which Kumasi is the capital of.

How the cards were made

We tried to make the cards as natural as possible by using banana leaves as the base creating the shape of the card. Inside a piece of paper is sewn in order to allow you to write a personal message for a friend or family member.

Trainees have different skills and so patterns were prepared to help them draw certain shapes. Sometimes they needed help with cutting them out, but the composition on the card or the choice of colours (i.e. red palm tree) is completely their own creation which we dared not to intervene with. Students also participated in collecting the banana leaves.

At the back of the card there is a sticker with: Made by the students of Edwenase Rehabilitation Centre for the disabled, Kumasi, Ghana - www.ercghana.blogspot.com - so the receivers of these cards will know who they were made by, why they are special, and how to receive more information about our work here.

There are therefore two types of cards :

with an Adinkra symbol cut from a Ghanaian cloth


with different shapes ( Christmas tree, angel, shooting star) cut from paper or banana leaves and coloured

How will your donations be spent?

All the money raised from the Christmas cards will be used for the benefit of students. Three main issues we hope to address with the donations are:


1. Wheelchair ramps

The centre has ramps for the the trainees who use wheelchairs, apart from the steps to their dormitories. These steps mean that to go in and out of their room they need to get off the wheelchair, bring it over to the other side and climb on it again. During the day there may be 10 to 15 such journeys. Concrete ramps would solve the issue.

2. Library
Evening time is usually boring for all, apart from the time when TV is on. There are few games or books to compete with the box and develop different skills of the students. This is what we aim to change by introducing a library, where trainees will be able to choose from language (Twi and English), art and song, literacy and numeracy books; games (e.g. table tennis, boardgames, music practice) to fill in free time, enjoy communally and practise important skills.


3. School kit

Numeracy, Literacy and English classes are to be introduced for all the trainees, but in order to practise and be able to fully benefit from them each of the students should have a school kit containing: notebook, pencil, pen, ruler, eraser, pencil sharpener.

After the end of the action we will include a detailed report including photos of how the donations were spent.

If you would like to get more information about the centre, order a card or make a donation please contact us at erc.kumasi@yahoo.com

How you can buy them

If you are interested in receiving cards then please email me at dbamoran@yahoo.com, send me an sms at 00233240020157 with your name, postal and email address, amount and type of cards you would like.

Cost

There is no set price for these cards. They were handmade by the students at Edwenase with the assistance of volunteers. A suggested donation would be €0.50-€2 per card depending on the size and whether you purchase those with traditional kente cloth in the shape of Adrinka symbols or those with coloured Christmas symbols.

For example, a mixture of 10 cards may average out at €10. If you can afford less or more that's also ok. It's important for me to stress here that these cards are special because they are handcrafted and each is unique. There is no chance you will receive a duplicate card as the shape, size and colour of each card is different.