Taking Initiatives - They composed a song!

Dreams Arise Ghana designed a Youth Mentorship Programme for young students in the Big-Ada community. Our programme was a pilot version and we look forward to having more cohorts improved of course with the lessons learnt. 

The Youth Mentorship Programme was designed to empower, educate and mentor participants to becoming empathetic leaders in their community and anywhere they find themselves. We believe that mentorship is one tool that can be used to transform lives, interrupt growth patterns and of course when done in group provides the opportunity for communal behavioural change and growth.

Although, the entire programme from beginning to the end has been an insightful learning journey, the end part was the most exciting. The part where participants were given the chance to explore and apply lessons learnt from the workshop and training sessions. 

The group of 20 participants were assigned a project to complete within a month. Educate 1000 students (primary to Junior High) in four local schools on plastic waste management. They were to do this in groups of 5, hence we had four groups to work with. 

Of course, we did encounter a few challenges during the preparation process. Starting with the excitement to do a new project, then to the disappointment with choice of schools by some group members, then to the delay in learning their presentations, then to not showing up for rehearsals, and wanting to do a particular part of the presentation, not being anxious to do the presentation. Oooh, it was some kind of work, dealing with a mix of emotions and different experiences. And as with any other presentation we had, we always had to cross the “let’s cancel this” stage before getting to the finish line. In spite of everything we went through, participants didn’t want to stop even when we had ended.

It was during this stage that we discovered that learning had indeed happened. Starting with the first presentation when the first group set the precedent for the rest. We showed up that morning for a day which looked like everything was going to go wrong. Two members of the group did not show up on time and it was almost time for us to go in. At that moment, two group members decided to share the presentation lines of their colleagues who didn’t show up and yes, they felt fully able to do it! Eventually, one of the missing members showed up but the other had to be covered. Seeing their courage to implement the project without having to whimper about the absence of someone was so beautiful. The next surprise came when two girls on the team informed us they had composed a song to enhance the learning process. Whew…… this is it! They had embodied the project and taken initiative to work the extra mile to succeed at it. Quickly they taught the rest of the group the song and that was how the song became the highlighter for that and all the other presentations we had. 

Plastic waste song – Composed by Mavis, Winifred and Sylvia. 

Plastic is caused by us, we have to let it go

Plastic is caused by us, we have to let it go

Me and you

You and me

That’s why we have to let it go

First, prevent

Second, Reduce 

Third, Reuse

Recover and Dispose 

That’s why we have to let it go

Observing and hearing what the first two groups had done, the next two groups showed up on their presentation day with another level of heightened passion. Everyone came in confident to deliver, they prepared showcase materials to go along with their presentations and they showed up in the group spirit to make it work! 

We know this is only the beginning of great things to expert from our young leaders. We look forward to creating more of these change agents that will work to set new good examples for their colleagues to follow.