Hi everyone, this is cohort six - welcome to our first blog!
Before I go any further I think I should introduce the new awesome team, who are all volunteers on the WOSAG project here in Tamale.

Our team consists of 8 volunteers, five UK volunteers (UKV’s) and 3 in-country volunteers (ICV’s). The UKV’s are: Olivia (25) who lives in London, Laura (24) who is from Newcastle upon Tyne, Katie (23) who is from Hertfordshire, Chelsie (18) who is from Eastbourne and Charlie (18) from Nottingham. The ICV’s are: Huzeifa (23) from Daboya, Suale (23) from Tamale and Yussif (22) from Yendi.

We also have two team leaders, Roz (from Ireland) and Ella (from the upper west region of Ghana).

The team from left to right – Ella, Chelsie, Olivia, Huseifa, Laura, Suale, Katie, Yussif, Charlie, Roz
Now that you know our names, ages and where we are from we think we should give you a bit more info by telling you our likes and dislikes - so here goes…
Ella likes food and dislikes lazy people.

The team from left to right – Ella, Chelsie, Olivia, Huseifa, Laura, Suale, Katie, Yussif, Charlie, Roz

Roz likes socialising and food (especially crisps). She dislikes early mornings - although she says she is becoming well acquainted with them being out here!

Katie likes meeting new people, yoga and smoothies. She dislikes rude people and anteaters.

Laura likes music, jammie dodgers and helping others.  She dislikes rude/lazy people and discrimination/inequality in the world.

Charlie likes orange juice and odd socks and dislikes pineapple on pizza.

Chelsie loves skating and dislikes banku (a soup like dish with some goey dough ball thing, it’s a traditional Ghanaian meal).


Olivia likes Buffy the Vampire Slayer and dislikes nuts (a good call I’d say considering she’s allergic!)

Suale likes joking, reading and playing music. He dislikes wrestling.

And finally we have Yussif. He likes chatting with friends, watching movies and research. He dislikes discrimination.

So yeah, that’s us – WOSAG’s sixth cohort. As the weeks go on you will hopefully find out a bit more information about us all  Before we go we just want to give you a brief overview of the work we have done so far.

The UKV’s landed in Ghana on Wednesday 5th April so we have been here for almost three weeks now. We had three days of in-country training where we met our team leaders and our in-country counterparts. We then started work at our project office on Monday 9th April. So far we have read the debrief and handover notes provided by cohort 5, written our project plan for this cohort and conducted research into the topics we will be dealing with as WOSAG volunteers (domestic violence, contraception, menstruation, consent, sexual transmitted infections and sexual reproductive health rights). We’ve also researched upcoming International Days recognised by the United Nations and we have met the two communities which we will be working with, Banvim and Kanvili.

Meeting the women of Banvim community!

Keep checking back for our next blog. Thank you for reading and I hope you find our work interesting.

Meeting the women of Banvim community

Written by Laura.