Journey's End: Resource donation to Besease Basic School

With the overland journey to Ghana completed in late November, the boxes of toys, books, arts & crafts materials, sports equipment and tools were offloaded at the Sabre Trust's office in Elmina. Aside from the accumulated layers of dust and sand from the Sahara crossing, all of the items collected by staff at Davis Langdon's Birmingham Office were in perfect condition, and were stacked in storage, awaiting a sorting process before distribution.

Making use of the enthusiastic Sabre volunteers staying in Ghana during December, we began the job of sorting through the contents of 215 boxes, filtering the resources for different school age groups. The first items to be tackled were the toys, the books and the sports equipment – the toys would be used to populate a toy library in the newly built Kindergarten School at Besease Basic School, whilst the books would furnish the first ever school library at the same school. The sports equipment would be shared between a local football academy and the District Education Office. The remaining items were to be used on future projects: arts & crafts materials for after school workshops, site tools for the forthcoming construction project at Dwabor, and the gardening equipment for school farm projects.

Almost three months to the day after beginning their journey from the UK, the first boxes of donated items were delivered on Friday 23 January 2009. These were the books and toys for Besease Basic School, which were timed to coincide with the inauguration of the recently completed kindergarten construction project. This was an extremely exciting and long awaited day for the community – they had begun building their own kindergarten school several years earlier, but the project had stalled due to lack of funds. With Sabre's assistance the project was restarted in May 2007 and completed in late 2008. In the absence of formal classroom facilities, the kindergarten classes had been taught in a derelict church building and under a temporary bamboo shelter.

Being a community celebration, marquees were rigged up around the school and chairs set out for over 100 invited guests – community elders, teachers and dignitaries from the District Education Office. At the appointed hour (10.30) Aubrey, Sabre's Operations Director arrived in the Bedford Truck that he had driven down the 6,000 miles from the UK to Ghana. The purchase and delivery of this vehicle had been funded using the £10,421 raised by the Davis Langdon Birmingham Office as part of their 2008 staff day.

During the school opening ceremony, speeches were given by the community chief, Nana Arkoh, the head teacher, Mr Mensah, Sabre's Operations Director, Aubrey Malcolm-Green, and the Deputy Director of the District Education Office, Mr Pinkrah. All of the speakers congratulated the community on their efforts in completing the kindergarten school and applauded the Sabre Trust for their assistance and the donations of books and toys. The ceremony closed with the gift of a full set of chief's regalia to Aubrey, a gesture of thanks from the community, cementing the continuation of their partnership collaboration with the Sabre Trust.

The school teachers, assisted by Sabre volunteers, will now ready the toy and book library for use in the coming weeks.

A big, big thank you to everyone from the Davis Langdon Birmingham Office who helped to gather the resources and raise the funds for the truck, or as we say in Ghana: Medawoasi!