Humanize the Earth!

Beatrice Brown team report (draft)

December 5, 2004 at 10:47 pm | In Uncategorized |

Beatrice has never sent me an email, and on this trip I found out why. She has no typing experience and hasn’t used a computer before. We made arrangements with her team for people to help her communicate with me and learn to use the computer herself over time.

This is a small team, but they have started a garden project and have already harvested some items. Beatrice has 6 members working directly with her and 16 total members in the council in 4 separate groups. They submitted the following:

Brief History & an Appeal

The six members of this project started in the month of July 28, 04 gearing toward been self sustainable In view of the foregoing, we started by molding mud bricks and renting of tools, such as shovels, diggers and rake. In this direction we were able to mold one thousand two hundred (1,200) mud bricks at the rate of five hundred cedis per bricks which amounted to six hundred thousands cedis (c600,000) [ed: ~US$70], but due to the hard labour involved, we decided to look toward agriculture production. We got in contact with the land owner (Ghanian) who land is situated between the estate and the refugee camp. A six feet well was dug to water the garden in two hard working days to complete. This include corn, pepper, beans, palava sauce, okra and etc.

To get our project started, we spent the c600,000 this way:

Seeds (corn 15,000, pepper 15,000, beans 15,000, palava sauce 13,000, potatoe greens 10,000, okra 10,000, pumpkin 5,000)	83,000
Tool Rental 48,000/day x 7 days (once per week) (they said 420,000) wheelbarrow 1x 6,000 =6,000 cutlasses 3×3,000=9,000 hoes 4×3,000=12,000 shovals 2×3,000=6,000 diggers 2×3,000=6,000 rakes 3×3,000=9,000	336,000
drinking water 4,000/day x 7 days	28,000
food (rice/oil) 10,000 x 7 days (once per week)	70,000
Total (they said 600,000)	517,000

Due to the hard cost of renting tools, we are therefore appealing to your organization to please help us to purchase our own tools to extend the garden to a full farm. The tools needed are:

tools	Qty	unit price	amount
wheel barrow	2	500,000	1,000,000
Cutlasses	6	35,000	210,000
Hoes	6	20,000	120,000
rain boots	6	100,000	600,000
Hand glove	6	35,000	210,000
Rakes	3	25,000	75,000
spraying cans	4	680,000	2,720,000
Shovels	3	50,000	150,000
water cans	4	120,000	480,000
grand total			5,565,000	[ed: ~US$630]

The spraying cans will not only be used for the garden, but also for sanitation purpose like spraying the drainages, bathrooms and toilets to help prevent some diseases like diarrhea, cholera and malaria on the refugee camp.

In view of the above, we are appealing to your good organization to help us get our tools so as to make our dream come through. We are at the verge of harvesting our crops and we are expecting to hear from you as soon as possible to enlarge the garden to a farm. We will be very much glad to see you come visit us on our farm in the future.

Beatrice in Garden 2004-1
Beatrice in Garden 2004-2

Thanks,
Sincerely Yours,
Six Members
Attested by Beatrice Browne (signature)

I took this photo of Beatrice’s team at garden 27 November 2004

Once I get all of the current round of fundraising requests organized, I need to decide goals for each one (how much I’m willing to ask for each one). This one is way high given the number of people involved, but even a small amount will go a long way with this team.

categories: Ghana Africa Humanist Movement fundraising