Martin spent a productive week in Ghana. He managed to meet up with local Awutu MP the Honourable David Larbie (picture of the meeting now posted on the Gallery!) who is very supportive of the project.
Helped by Baffour Osei, who has been acting as project surveyor, Martin made contact with a number of potential IT suppliers and we are following them up now.
The challenge will be to raise the £10,000 needed to pay for the installation of satellite technology and to run the IT lab for the first year.
Martin also met up with Mrs Jane Chinebuah who is the District Director of Education for the region, and now based actually in Awutu. She and the District Chief Executive, ( DCE) the Honourable Adams Nuhu had a meeting with Martin and Eddie Quarshie, ( who has been supervising the building of the first phase) . They were both delighted to hear that EDP’s intention is to hand the school over to the local authorities ( once the buildings are ready) to allow them to run it as a non fee paying (MUCH NEEDED!!) local community secondary school. As Martin explained our hope is that once opened , The Awutu Winton School will then forge close links with its affiliate- The Winton School, in Andover, UK.
Martin was also able to show everyone the plans for the proposed second phase , which were received well- until we mentioned EDP needed to raise another £50,000 to build it!
Nevertheless we have pencilled in a March 2010 start as we’ll need a good 18 months to complete the second phase in time for the second year’s intake planned for autumn 2011.
A more pressing problem is the news from the DCE that it will cost around 50,000 Ghanaian Cedis (just under £22,000) to install electricity to the site and that they would prefer EDP to fund this !
Anyway we will soldier on. The decoration has now begun on the first phase and Paul Kelly is working with Romsey based Hampshire Business Computers to set up some working hardware to include in the large container, bursting with furniture and other goodies, destined for the Awutu school.
We’ll update the site with another blog once the building is ready- hopefully early in the New Year.
In the meantime, thank you everyone for taking the time to read this - and for your ongoing support.
We wish you all a very Merry Christmas.
The EDP Trust team.
