Good news on the community development front in Busua! About 6 months ago, and with the help of interns Tim Lucas and Riley Bartlett, the Black Star Surf Shop initiated the Busua Community Tourist Center (CTC) Project. The black star development team (Tim, Riley, and Pete) have helped the community, represented by the Town Tourist Committee and the Ahanta Environmental Club, to get this project off the ground. It is all of our belief that having a community-run tourist center will benefit the local community in many ways and see to it that they get a tangible benefit from the growing tourism in and around Busua.
To date, we have secured a piece of land for the CTC site from the Ahanta Chief in Busua (thanks Chief!), surveyed the land, and took a group of Busua representatives to see existing successful CTC’s that are operating in the Volta Region of Ghana. This trip was highly successful as it was an opportunity to both see success in action and to ask questions on how the communities were running their CTC’s and how they were benefiting.
Busua reps visit the Volta
We are now in the process of writing a constitution to spell out exactly how the CTC will function and who will be involved. We are working with three NGO’s- RC, SNV and GREET- to ensure that there is a good chance the capacity building training will lead to a sustainable project. We also recently received a private donation that will help us continue to build on our successes as a community and to achieve, with the help of the above NGO’s, full funding for this project. We are also currently involved in other community projects, like introducing solar oven and some microfinancing for local tourist businesses, but more on that later…..
You have to do something when the waves are small !!!!!!
