My Experience Volunteering in Ghana as a School Teacher

Soooo, I spent 4 weeks in Ghana last Summer to teach English lessons in a local Ghanaian school!

It’s been a whole year since my trip of a lifetime and I’ve only just gotten around to blogging about it! I’m going to try and put in as much detail as I can remember…Hold on tight, it’s gonna be a long one.

I first found out about the volunteering programme, through one of my close friends at University. She also applied and we were both successful💁. The programme has been running for over 10 years and has positively impacted 280,000+ learner’s lives. Its main aim is to enhance the education of young people in Africa, through delivering Maths and English lessons to the poorest schools in Africa. If you’re interested in finding out any more information about the charity and the amazing work that they do, you can do so here.

We stayed in surprisingly amazing accommodation within a University campus, as we were teaching in the capital city, Accra. There was 6 of us, so we taught in pairs, in 3 different schools around the area. My school, Anumle Junior, was probably the most deprived out of them all. The resources of the school were at a very minimum and hardly any students even had their own pen.

I spent my evenings planning interactive and engaging English lessons and my days teaching those lessons. I often taught to over 60 students in one class!

Think I’m joking?

It is actually normal to have large classes of students in Ghana. This is because the schools try to give as many children in the area the opportunity and gift of education.

Despite the poverty and difficulties these children face, I have genuinely never seen more joyful people. Not only were they incredibly cheerful throughout the day, they were so respectful towards us and passionate about their education. It was inspiring to see how much they appreciated the things we take for granted.

I really enjoyed getting to know the children on a personal level. They taught us about their culture and traditions and we helped them pass their exams! Many of the students I taught had big ambitions of attending University and becoming Accountants, Doctors and Teachers. Hearing about their dreams, pushed me even harder to make sure I did the best I could to help them.

During our free time, we had the chance to explore the wonders of the city and wonderful it definitely was! To say Ghana is a developing country, it was a lot more developed than I originally anticipated.

Our weekend were filled with adventures. We went on trips to the beach, botanical gardens, live music restaurants and many shopping trips!

Towards the end of our trip, we were given an allowance to spend on resources for their school. This was in order to leave a positive and lasting impact on the schools before we had to leave. As I mentioned earlier, the children at Anumle lacked stationary which tragically slowed down their progress during class, so we decided to put together a stationary pack for each student.

My experience in Ghana is one that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I have always been involved in volunteering and charity work since a young age, but this was on another level.

Although this post is about me sharing my experiences, I also really do hope to inspire you to take some time out of your lives and devote this precious time to helping others. I’m not saying everyone needs to travel thousands of miles to Africa, but everywhere in the world there are people who are not as fortunate as yourself, people who need a helping hand. Not only is it enormously gratifying for yourself, but more importantly, the improvement you could make to someone else’s life is second to none.