Kwahu-Tafo Disabled Association

 

In 2003, FOT Trustee Georgina Owen visited Kwahu-Tafo and was instrumental in reconstituting the Disabled Association. This group, under the leadership of BD, a teacher and desk-top publisher who is himself disabled, provides recognition and a focus for funding. The Disabled Association is represented on the Kwahu-Tafo Development Council, ensuring that the needs of disabled people are heard: it has formed a Disabled Action Plan for orthopaedic consultations, operations, appliances and physiotherapy and we are always looking to finance activity and training projects.

 

 

 

 

Amputation is not uncommon in Tafo, necessitated all too often by diabetes, a disease to which the local diet makes people liable. Accidents also happen, as in the case of 12 year-old Janet Opokua who had a bench fall on her leg when she was fooling around in a classroom against the rules. Since she didn't dare tell her parents the wound was allowed to fester. Thanks to FOT supporter the Presteigne Medical Fund, she is now being fitted with an artificial leg.

 

 

One of KTDC's desires is to supply wheelchairs. The organizations which import reconditioned ones (such as Echoing Hills in Accra) do not seem to be able to get hold of the "tricycle" kind, which doesn�t mean three wheelers so much as those with hand-propelling levers for people whose arms do not have sufficient strength to push wheels. One such is 29 year old Adamu Yaaya, for whom we wish we could get help to match his high spirits.

 

 

 

 

 

Adamu Yahaya (left) and learning a board game

 

This attention to Tafo's disabled population is also beginning to show wider results. A ramp has been installed at the Library entrance to complement the steps, and KTDC will be reviewing accessibility across the town in order to promote equality.

 

 

A strong wheelchair-pusher is good to find

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are urgently looking for�major funding for a training workshop to teach disabled people and others to make leather shoes and bags. This is the dream of Augustine Tenkorang, an expert teacher who has retired to Tafo from the shoe-making workshop at Nsawam Orthpaedic Centre. It will require �6,000 for a one-year training course (during and after which the workshop and the pupils will become self-sustaining, and loans will be repaid to KTDC), and for temporary premises, equipment, and materials to add to a windfall donation of tools which Augustine has received from Tafo�s one-time great benefactor Fr. Norbert in Germany.

 

Who we are - Friends of Tafo Committee