ECHOES: West African Program Benefiting Youth and Young Adults in the Cocoa Sector of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire

Entry: David Noyes, World Cocoa Foundation Program Coordinator I wanted to share with the readers an update from my recent travels in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. For those who don’t know me, my name is David Noyes, World Cocoa Foundation Program Coordinator for ECHOES, an initiative funded by USAID and World Cocoa Foundation company members. I am working with Charlie Feezel on the second phase of the program with the ambitious goal of reaching over 160,000 youth and young adults in West Africa. On December 8, 2009 I joined ECHOES partners in Ghana for a local work planning meeting to coordinate activities over the next two years. ECHOES partners IFESH, Winrock International, and World Education brought together their local field staff, IFESH volunteers, and country coordinators to discuss timing of activities in the communities, collaboration and coordination of these activities, and the monitoring and evaluation plan for ECHOES. One of the interesting new activities under the new phase of the program is Community Resource Centers which will be operated by our partners, together with local communities. By October 2010 Winrock International, with significant community contributions, expects to have established eight ICT-enabled community resource centers in the Western Region of Ghana. These centers will be based at junior high schools and will be equipped with computers, internet access (or simulated access through the e-Granary system), printers, photocopiers, scanners, projectors, and books. Once the centers have been established, all three partners will use the space to coordinate training activities, including ICT training for teachers, administrators, and center managers; ICT training for youth; computer-based literacy training for adults; and training for young farmers to enable them to gain access to agricultural information. The first two centers will be operational by the end of January 2010. The ICT centers are particularly interesting to me, since young people in remote areas of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire will have access for the first time to computers and the internet. Thinking back on when I was a math and science teacher with the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso, I would not have imagined that this would be possible on this kind of scale. As the second phase of ECHOES develops, I look forward to sharing with you some of the achievements, and challenges of bringing improved educational opportunities to youth through this important program.