Poppy’s £2 a day challenge for Ghana

Posted: 31st January 2022

Sixth Former is raising money for a hospital and school nursery in Ghana that she plans to volunteer for by subsisting on £2 a day – the same budget as locals there live on.

Poppy Whitehead, Lower Sixth, hopes to raise at least £1500 so that once she gets to Busua in western Ghana in February she can buy textbooks, stationery, toys and sports equipment for the nursery and make a contribution to the local hospital, as she will be helping at both sites.

Poppy said: “The average daily budget for people in Ghana is £2.35 and that must cover all their food. We in Britain enjoy a standard of living that most people in Ghana could only dream of and I thought it would be a good way of highlighting the needs of Ghanaians by undertaking to live on £2 a day for a week from January 31. To be able to complete this challenge I will have to give up my usual luxuries like coffee, multiple snacks and my dad’s tasty meals and look to bulk buy the cheapest, plainest ingredients in the supermarket – dried and tinned food. I will have to carefully plan all my meals and budget, taking into account any leftovers to reuse. I will have to resist cravings, forgo my usual snacks and stick to only three very basic, plain, small meals a day.”

Poppy fell in love with the idea of volunteering in west Africa after forming a friendship with a girl in Gambia that she met through her great aunt who lives there. She explained: “It is something I’ve always wanted to do. My Gambian friend Mia and I have been WhatsApping for a few years and I’ve built up a connection with her and I wanted to be able to help out people like her who just don’t have the same privileges we have. I was looking at opportunities to travel and do some volunteering and I came across an organization called The Mighty Roar who help sort trips to locally run volunteering schemes.”

A small amount of the money she raises will help towards travel costs but the vast majority will be given to the hospital or on school items that the Busua nursery simply can’t afford.

Added Poppy: “Ghana actually has a national health service free at the point of need, like ours. But these hospitals struggle with underresourcing and understaffing as their economy cannot support a free healthcare service like ours can. This means that the standard of care, equipment and standard of buildings are very different. I am keen to study medicine at university after my A-levels so I am really interested to experience a healthcare system in a middle-low income country to better understand how it differs to our NHS.”

To sponsor Poppy’s £2-a day week, please go to https://gogetfunding.com/help-me-raise-money-for-supplies-for-children-in-overcrowded-nurseries-and-to-provide-medical-supplies-in-ghana/