Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR) is a Ghanaian NGO that advocates for gender equality, community empowerment, and reproductive health rights. The Media in Ghana group has formed teams to create a bank of images, graphic designs, and multimedia projects to capture stories and help ARHR with advocacy.

These projects, along with a social media and branding strategy creation, have kept the UO students busy. The group is inspired by the opportunities it holds to provide service and learn about the quality of health services in Ghana.

Navigating the project with as much cultural sensitivity as possible is no easy process. A few weeks ago half of us trekked to Mater Ecclesiae Clinic in the Volta region of Ghana and today the rest of us went to Tema General Hospital. In these visits the goal was to focus on the maternal and newborn health and capture the media that will allow us to create projects ARHR can use as they see fit.

The group is documenting the poor quality of some of the services available to women, but also some of the better-run facilities in an effort to show the world as it is here, but also how it ought it be. To crystallize this, we observed women recovering from cesarean sections in cramped rooms with no air conditioning, often having to share three women and babies to one bed. Although the conditions are not ideal, doctors and hospital workers are doing their best with what they have and being innovative to make the most of their supplies.

All in all, it was a lot to process and put into context and as one of the older students on the trip, I want to give some credit to the students in the group who are doing their best to help in the ways that they can. Here they are, hard at work: