GHANA 2014
Global Business Brigades
About 40 students from the McCombs School of Business got together as a Micro Finance team and traveled to Ghana, Africa.
"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."- Mahatma Gandhi
Everyone has a memorable moment...
mine happened to be my internship and service trip to Ghana through a student led organization at The University of Texas at Austin called Global Business Brigades
What is Global Business Brigades:
Global Business Brigades is part of the worlds largest student-led health and sustainable development non-profit organization called Global Brigades. Each year Global Brigades mobilizes thousands of university students around the world to participate in 9 different skills-based programs to improve the quality of life in under-resourced communities.
About 40 students from the McCombs School of Business got together as a Micro Finance team and traveled to Ghana, Africa.
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| January 2013 brigaders from UT Austin in Ghana, Africa! |
In Ghana:
I got a chance to work hand-in-hand with Ghanian brigade leads, community chiefs, community members and more. We were all there to achieve one goal, to spread financial literacy around our community, which was called Adansi Maam. We started off by opening a bank in our community. We then split into small groups and started talking to families.
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| The bank we opened in Adansi Maam |
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| One of the families we got an opportunity to work with |
Once we were assigned our families, we spend a day or two just getting to know them. This was one of the most important steps because if you do not connect with your family then you cannot build trust. After that we tried figuring out their yearly salary. The way we did this was by taking a few days to ask the family members what their source of income is, how often they receive money and expenses they made during the year. This is done in a very detailed manner because there is not set salary for each family. After we compile data on each family's income, we, as a team, come up with a plan to teach the families on how to save money. For many, we used the old school method paper and pencil. We taught them to count how much money they make each day, write it down, and save a certain amount of money everyday. In that way, they could build up and save money for their children and themselves. We also guided them in a process of opening a bank in the community. It was very rewarding to see our hard work pay off at the end when we see our families opening a bank. We could definitely say we made a difference in the world.
