On July 10th we finally had our Assembly Members
Workshop Meeting! If you are wondering where I have been since you last heard
from me, I strongly apologize as my team and I have been working tirelessly to
prepare for this event. For all of you who have not been on board, the Assembly
Members Workshop was conducted in order to explain why it is crucial that each
Member do their part in the conducting of Day Care Centre inspections. In addition
to expressing why it is important that each member do their job as an Elected Assembly
member by the people in their community, we also handed out some resources that
are crucial in conducting an inspection. Some of the resources include a list
of Day Care Centres that each Assembly Member is in charge of inspecting based
on their jurisdiction, and an easy check off sheet that we created for the
conducting of inspection, as many members complained about how time consuming
it was to inspect a Day Care Centre (not that they had ever inspected one
before to actually know if it was or not since it seriously takes no more than
35 minutes to conduct.) Also During the workshop, the interns (Lydia, Emily and
I) passed out our proposed Bye-Law which is the center piece for our project
which deals with enhancement in the quality of Day Care Centres in the Cape
Coast metropolis. Emily Lydia and I created this bye law because there has not
been a detailed version of Day Care Regulations made available since 1979
meaning that the decree that is being used now is very outdated. At the
Workshop, the Assembly Members were very receptive of the Bye-Law, and wanted
to adopt it right away. However, as with any legal document, the bye-law must
go through all of the required steps in order to be accepted as the official decree
for all Day Care Centre regulations in Cape Coast. To make sure that our
document follows all of these steps, we will send it to the social service
Department In the morning, and from then it will go to the Executive Committee
of the Assembly who will discuss it with the Assembly members. Many of these
members are those who showed up at our workshop and who have already expressed their
enthusiasm in adopting it as their own. Because of this, my team and I are very
confident about the outcome of the bye-law and our project as a whole. We truly
believe that our project will be sustainable after we have departed, especially
if our proposed bye-law is accepted. As far as the Assembly members continuing
with inspections, we have set aside an incentive package of ten phone calling
credits for each report turned in to The Department of Social Welfare. Each
Assembly member may do as many reports as he has Day Care Centres in his
jurisdiction. Usually, there are no more than 6 or 7 Day Care Centre in one
Jurisdiction totaling to a maximum amount of about 70 Cedi of telephone Credit
each member can obtain. I must say, when we introduced this incentive package
to the Assembly Members, they were beyond excited! I have never in my life seen
a group of politicians act the way they acted that day. As of now, we have
collected 6 inspections of the 70 that are required to be done twice a year. This
beats the whopping zero that they have done within the entire year that they
had known about their duties to the Department and Day Care Centres, so I am
happy to see that we are making some progress! After creating a budget plan, we
have concluded that there will be enough funds to sustain the project for at
least a year and a half.
Kudos to Emily, Lydia and I and my wonderful Director Amofa
who helped guide us!
Aww, I wish I could see the video! Alas!
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