KINDERSLEY, Sask. – On a cool spring night in western Saskatchewan, the flavor of Ghana is present in the jollis rice and peanut-coconut snacks.
The African chicken casserole, served with bread chunks, fruit salad and cookies, was served at the annual international night of the Kindersley Co-op Women’s Guild.
But it wasn’t just the food that drew the crowd on April 20. It was the words of two women from the Ghana Co-operative Credit Union Association. The women are on a Canadian speaking tour that has stops in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario.
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Guild member Joy Johnson said one of the images that struck her during the talk was of St. Peter’s Credit Union in Ghana, which is used by small street businesses. Of the 1,700 members who save and borrow at the credit union, more than half turn out to the monthly meetings.
Traditional banks would not serve the small businesses until this credit union started. Poor families often hid their cash in a mattress or kitchen cupboard, said Grace Sarpong of the Ghana movement.
Ghana has 200 credit unions, several developed over the past decade in a partnership program with the Canadian Co-operative Association.
Kath Frazer works for the Prairie Centre Credit Union in Rosetown, Sask., which is twinned with the Ghanian St. Peter’s. She said the three-year project involved two exchange trips of personnel. The face-to-face meetings “really keeps it alive,” she said of the project, which ends in 2000.
“Our community isn’t just here (Rosetown.) We can assist them in terms of our experiences. These co-ops are just forming. We’re 50 years old. They are just computerizing, so we give them advice and comfort with computers. So little does so much.”
More authority
Besides providing fiscal and technological expertise, the Canadians have helped Ghanian women gain respect. Women now hold elected positions on credit union boards, including those at the national level, and have the money for their own businesses, the visitors said.
Kindersley guild member Ruth Massey said she was impressed with the fact that to join the St. Peter’s credit union, individuals must take education classes.
Massey said the Ghanian women were appreciative of the financial training offered by the Canadians and amazed by the huge expanse of the Prairies. But they were puzzled after a tour of a nursing home and asked why the old people were not living at home with younger generations.
When the Canadians explained children often live far away from their parents, the Ghanians said it did not matter, that people should take their aunt or a friend’s mother into their home for the elder’s final years.
One of those at the guild’s recent international night, said Johnson, was a blind 94-year-old woman who wanted to talk to the Ghanian visitors because she has had a penpal in that country for 25 years.
