Living The Dream - A Ghana Project And Transition Update

So glad we are at that stage of life where things are slowing down and can take it all in at a leisurely pace. LOL

It is just three weeks ago that we returned from our Eurasia escapade. And only two weeks since the Bil and Sil survived...I mean ENJOYED... their adventure with de-I Sandia Outfitter's Cooking School. Tomorrow I am off to Chicago for a couple of days of business. And in three weeks, I will be off once again to Accra, Ghana to move forward the great Rotary Volunteer Project. It has been a while since I did an update on that project. Since it continues to move at maximum warp speed, I will rectify that omission.

• One of the big lessons, I have learned is that if you want to raise money, you have to be willing to go where the donor market wants to be.
• What this means is even if you are all hot and excited about a project, if the market place of donors is excited about something else you had better change your trajectory
• So I have taken my main hypothesis - that we can create more jobs in developing countries by helping smaller/middle sized companies to operate more effectively - and put it on a slower burner while I take a project I saw as a sidelight and make it the lead
• That project is developing a turnkey program to assist sex workers to not just get job skills to move them out of sex work but create a business they can own that will allow them to make a better living than sex work
• This all came about because I met another American in Accra, an educator who has been working in Ghana since 2010, who created a cooperative for some sex workers and wanted a business to give them an exit (I will write a longer post soon about the issue of sex workers in a developing country such as Ghana because it is a very different environment than the US and one has to be careful about bringing cultural baggage that clouds one perception). He was all over me because he has no business skills and wanted me to help him create a business for the women under his guidance
• I got sound advice from Daughter #2 and others that this project was totally in the bullseye for donors today. It hit all the hot buttons - helping disadvantaged women, helping sex workers to find other ways to earn a living, training and education, job development
• So I have made this the lead project while not forgetting the other
• So much else is happening - doing due diligence on my new partner, doing research on our proposed business for the women (as I will call them), getting ourselves set up legally here to raise money (setting up a not-for-profit corporation), finding out the kind of accounting support we will need 

Getting ready to go to Ghana this time is so different. My schedule is already 60% full. I have two people who I am mentoring that are making huge strides. Wife will be joining me not on this trip but in a trip planned for September. I am very excited about that. Many of the projects being worked on are in need of accounting assistance. And everyone I have met there keeps asking when she is going to come so that will be answered.

So to make a slight shift into how this all relates to the Transition Process. If you might remember, this all got started about two and a half years ago when Wife and I realized that 1) what we really enjoyed about travel was the people interactions we have, 2) that to have more of those we were going to have to get engaged in someway deeper in a community and 3) if we were going to do that we should try to do something where we were giving back.

As I look at this Ghana Project, I make these observations. Are we engaging with people? Hell yes! Are we getting more engaged in a community? Hell yes! Are we giving back? Hell yes! Really if a grandiose project does not get off the ground, that was not our goal. As long as we are genuinely helping some people, engaging in a community and meeting people, that was all we ever sought. And if we can do that and stay within our budge, that's all that counts.

Sounds like 'living the dream' to me.