A BRIEF REPORT ON THE VISIT OF STUDENTS FROM OUR PARTNER SCHOOL, APIDON ROYAL COLLEGE, OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO.
March 23, 2023.
On March 3, 2023, a contingent of 45 students accompanied by a five-man monitoring team from Apidon Royal College, our partner school in Ouagadougou, arrived at the Ghana-Burkina Faso border, Paga, to begin a three-week English-French Language Exchange programme. They had an incident free journey as they were soon ushered into their hotel at Yikene, a suburb of Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region, around 10pm.
The next day, two members of the team from Great Victory Academy, Mr Zakari Muniru and Mr Animah Kinsford, visited their hotel, welcomed the contingent and arrangements were immediately made to start allocating students to host families who will be their guardians for the next three weeks. The arrangement was effectively carried out to the letter. This arrangement to allocate students to host families would continue concurrently with the academic schedules throughout the period.
On Monday, March 6, 2023, a few of our partner students who could make it, joined our students at the independence parade grounds for Ghana’s Independence Day celebration.
Due to the break associated with the independence day celebration, serious academic work began on, Wednesday, March 8, 2023. Two English Language teachers, Mr Akurugu Francis and Mr Adoosey Evans were assigned to the students, assisted by other teachers including the director of the school, Mr Josef Kris Akubah. Areas covered ranged from school to life at home, peer to peer interaction, travel, school environment, classroom interactions and many more that involve everyday exchanges. The academic aspect of the programme was wrapped up with two written examination papers which focused on:
- Recognition of things in the environment and general knowledge
- The basic rudiments of English Language usage and daily interactions.
Our host families had a huge praise for the majority of our guests apart from few issues which were associated with the change of environment, being home-sick and other attendant issues. These were however resolved quickly. Some of the female students in particular were quite outstanding in their offer of services to their host families. One outstanding example Is Ouedraogo Mariam Raifatou, who was hosted by the family of her partner student……. The family had a lot to say about her willingness and sacrificing spirit, personal initiative, maturity and leadership qualities. The family wished she could be allowed to stay a bit longer.
As a sign of gratitude to the host families and a way of showing appreciation to them, the school offered a waiver of school fees of Ghc 300.00 to each student that hosted a partner student.
We would like to state that it had been an exciting experience hosting our guests. It is our hope that this partnership yields the desired results and that the relationship that had begun with the host families will blossom into a long-term business partnership that will inure to the benefit of both sides in the exchange programme.
Compiled by
The Exchange Programme Team,
Great Victory Academy
- James Atongu.
- Muniru Zakari
