Building perspectives in Ghana

Nine students from the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Architecture will travel to Ghana on April 29 to take a course called Service Learning in the Global Community (SLGC).

The six-credit-hour course provides opportunities for students to live and work overseas while learning about culture, construction and design.  The University of Manitoba group will return to Canada on June 1.

Working as apprentices on a construction site, the students will build a school library for Presby Primary School in the town of Damongo. The group will engage in a collaborative process with non-profit organizations, community members, trades people, classmates, and instructors.

The impetus for the course is a belief that collaboration can contribute to architecture of global citizenship. Since 2005, Kelley Beaverford, executive director of Architects Without Borders Canada and an associate professor in the Faculty of Architecture, has offered this course in Ghana, Uganda, Turkey and Sri Lanka.

This project follows a successful partnership formed in 2010 to build St Anne’s Boarding House. Tools for Schools Africa, a non-profit organization in Red Deer Alberta, will fund the construction project. Since 2003, they have shipped teaching materials to more than 50 primary schools, set up three libraries, and conducted teacher training sessions reaching over 900 teachers in Northern Ghana. The success of their work lies in partnerships with local schools and development organizations. Technical and design assistance has been provided by Architects Without Borders Canada.

For more information please contact Professor Kelley Beaverford, Faculty of Architecture, at Kelley.Beaverford@ad.umanitoba.ca

Sean Moore