Ghana

'Put yourself out there': U of T grad Maame De-Heer on how she built a career amid COVID-19

lanthierj — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 20:34:49 +0000

'Put yourself out there': U of T grad Maame De-Heer on how she built a career amid COVID-19

lanthierj Fri, 11/20/2020 - 15:34

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Maame De-Heer, who graduates with a master's degree from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, says she was determined to make the most of her time at U of T as much “as my strength and capacity would allow me” (photo by Mike Tamakloe)

Françoise Makanda

Topic

Our Community

Convocation 2020

Graduate Stories

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Ghana

Global

Graduate Students

The pandemic couldn’t stop Maame De-Heer from graduating from the ��Ƶ’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health this fall – it couldn’t even slow her down.

De-Heer, who will receive her master of public health in social and behavioural health science, with a dual collaboration in global health and health services and policy research on Nov. 21, has big plans for life after graduation.

The Ghanaian-born grad hopes to revamp her family’s 17-year-old orphanage in Ghana and she’s starting her own organization – The Power of Love Foundation Canada – a grassroots approach to improving the wellbeing of Black people in Canada. She has already secured funding from the City of Toronto for the organization’s Single Mothers Project to aid single Ghanaian mothers in Etobicoke who need support during COVID-19.

De-Heers, who moved to Canada when she was 13, says a public health internship at the Tema General Hospital in Ghana sparked a desire to bridge the health gap for marginalized and underserved communities.

“Public health is a very broad concept and sometimes when you actually go to the Global South, you can see the effect of the lack of public health implementation and surveillance in action,” she says. “When I saw the lack of public health technology and the lack of tools that can improve the lives of people, I knew that this was it. This is what I need to do.”

At U of T, De-Heer was determined to be as involved as she could. She was a cohort representative in her first year. She served as the financial officer for the Black Graduate Students Association. A finalist in the School of Graduate Studies’ three-minute Thesis Competition, she was also an ACORN advisory team member who helped user experience designers make timetables easier for students to use.

And that’s only a sliver of her activities in the past two years.

“I was at U of T,” De-Heer says. “I did not want to do this program and go to this school without taking advantage of resources they had.

“My plan was to engage in a lot of things – as much as my strength and capacity would allow me.”

When the lockdown began, De-Heer switched gears and began exploring ways to get involved in the issues she cares about online, turning to LinkedIn to extend her network. In the same way that some people post pictures of their meals on Instagram, De-Heer says she shares her achievements online. “I keep it professional and move along.”

The shift to online took a lot out of her. De-Heer says she had to build the strength to find resources, foster online connections and share her successes with the world. But the effort opened doors.

De-Heer was recently selected as a delegate to RBC’s Future Launch’s Fast Forward 2020 – Youth Summit. Only 120 of 1,000 applicants were chosen to take part. Delegates meet other young people across the country to discuss and connect on solutions for Canada.

Recently, she was asked to speak at the panel “Prescribing Equity: Unpacking Racial Health Disparities for BIPOC communities” with scholars she admired: Camille Orridge, Lee Maracle and Dalla Lana Assistant Professor Roberta Timothy.

“When I got the call to speak and then I saw the event flyer, I nearly cried,” says De-Heer. “’I’m on a panel with the Roberta Timothy. I was grateful and that’s how I realized that putting myself out there has benefited me.”

De-Heer is ready to put her degree to work – and to draw on the skills she developed during the pandemic.

“A lot of people need your knowledge and want you to share it with them,” De-Heer says. “Never be scared to put yourself out there and share what you have done.

“It might be the stepping-stone for your progress.”

‘Going back to my centre’: How Suleyman Demi used PhD research at U of T to improve lives in Ghana

perry.king — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 20:31:04 +0000

‘Going back to my centre’: How Suleyman Demi used PhD research at U of T to improve lives in Ghana

perry.king Wed, 10/30/2019 - 16:31

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Suleyman Demi made Ghana the core of his research, studying everything from how his home country feeds itself to the role communities and local farming play in the future of food and the environment (all photos by Perry King)

Topic

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

U of T Scarborough

When he crosses the stage at Convocation Hall on Nov. 7, the ��Ƶ’s Suleyman Demi will know he got there by keeping Ghana in his mind – and close to his heart.

Demi, who will receive a PhD in social justice education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), made his home country the core of his research, studying everything from how the country feeds itself to the role communities and local farming play in the future of food and the environment.

Convocation marks the end of a chapter for Demi – and he has mixed feelings about it.

“I’m able to say that I’ve graduated, happy to finish my program. At the same time, I miss the kind of support I received from this community,” said Demi, who is currently a teaching assistant for a health studies course at U of T Scarborough.

At the same time, Demi is excited for what’s to come.

“Even though the title of ‘doctor’ puts a lot of responsibility on me … that’s life,” said Demi, who first arrived at OISE to pursue a master’s degree in humanities, social science education, and environment and health in 2013. “You move from one state to another and you should be prepared for it. It’s a transition and I’m trying to tune my mind [to the next challenge].”

Sign language needs policy protection in Ghana: U of T expert

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 20:31:46 +0000

Sign language needs policy protection in Ghana: U of T expert

noreen.rasbach Tue, 01/22/2019 - 15:31

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Andrew Foster with students from the boarding school for deaf children at Mampong-Akwapim, Ghana, about 1961 (courtesy of Gallaudet University Archives)

Topic

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Research & Innovation

In 1957, when Ghana gained independence from British colonial rule, African-American educator Andrew Foster established the first school for the Deaf in Ghana.

In so doing, Foster consolidated and echoed Kwame’s Nkrumah’s independence day declaration of freedom for Ghanaians. While Nkrumah championed African independence movements across the continent, Foster, a graduate of Gallaudet University in Washington, is the man who modelled equal education opportunities in Ghana.

Andrew Foster (centre), with his two most successful proteges: Seth Tetteh-Ocloo (left) from Ghana and Gabriel Adepoju (right), a Nigerian. Tetteh-Ocloo went on to lead the Ghana National Association for the Deaf (courtesy of Gallaudet University Archives)

Today, Ghana has about 16 schools for the Deaf. However, equal educational opportunities elude Deaf people in Ghana and students encounter many challenges. Chief among them is the fact that Ghana has no formalized sign language policy and therefore doesn’t systematically or adequately fund sign language services in schools for Deaf people.

Ghana urgently needs an official Ghanaian Sign Language (GSL) policy. Such a move has the potential to humanize Deaf education and alleviate the linguistic discrimination that Deaf students face. Furthermore, the work of GSL educators with Deaf students would finally find the support it needs and deserves.

Multiple sign languages in Ghana

People who take hearing for granted may not have considered the fact that sign languages are languages and require safeguards – just like spoken languages, for the sake of people and communities who rely on them.

As a doctoral researcher of language policy, I study how Ghana implements educational language policy for speakers of minority languages.

In my research with sign language professionals, I have discovered that just as a multitude of spoken languages exist in Ghana (81 in total), the Ghanaian Deaf community is also linguistically diverse.

Sign language researcher Victoria Nyst has identified four sign languages in Ghana. Ghanaian Sign Language (GSL) is widely used in schools and is a spin-off from American Sign Language (ASL). But GSL incorporates some locally constructed signs.

Sign languages in Ghana (author provided)

GSL is estimated to be used by the majority of Deaf people in Ghana. But statistics about the Deaf in Ghana are not well documented.

The Ghana National Association for the Deaf (GNAD) says approximately 0.4 per cent out of Ghana’s population of almost 29 million is Deaf, or 110,625 people; by contrast, the Ghana Statistical Service, reports 211,712 as Deaf.

Research shows that sign language is often viewed as an aberration in Ghana. The Deaf are often derogatorily referred to as mumu, meaning dumb.

In this way, a mainstream Ghanaian way of seeing equates deafness and sign languages to a defective way of being and speaking.

No official sign language policy

In Ghana, the Persons with Disability Act, 2006 (Act 715) enshrines the rights and treatment of Persons with Disability (PWDs).

Yet when compared with regional and global disability legislations, Act 715 is seriously deficient for many reasons – among them, the fact that this act provides no policy pertaining to GSL.

Researchers have called for the Ghanaian government to strengthen local policy for PWDs and to fully conform to provisions outlined in the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

Ghana ratified this convention in 2012, but the country has yet to follow UNCRPD measures and protections to support sign language learning and promote the linguistic rights and identity of deaf communities.

Schooling challenges

Due to inadequate interpretation and translation services in Ghanaian schools for the Deaf, Deaf students gradually forfeit schooling.

Schools serving Deaf students in Ghana have developed in a provisional and stop-gap fashion. Schools offer varied levels of academic instruction and vocational skills training, but Deaf students receive the same instruction and national level assessments as their hearing counterparts and it’s up to the teachers to make it work.

Thus educators in schools for students who are Deaf work in a context common for many minority languages – as language policy researcher Terrence Wiley names it, a “null policy” context, with language needs met with a significant absence of policy. Educators develop de facto policies and strategies to address gaps and promote their students’ academic, social and emotional welfare to lessen marginalization the students experience.

Using GSL to resist ‘disciplinary power’

Educators and the Ghana National Association of the Deaf (GNAD) are challenging stereotypes and empowering Deaf students to participate in policy surrounding their welfare.

For example, GNAD created a drama using GSL before the 2016 Ghanaian elections to promote awareness of civic rights. In the drama, Deaf people both taught the public about signing as a valid mode of communication and about how to vote.

Drama created for 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections by Ghana National Association of the Deaf

The creation of GSL dictionaries for use offline and online is another instance of unofficial language policy and planning.

The recent introduction of sign language into a mainstream school curriculum is an unprecedented attempt by sign language educators to break communication barriers between Deaf and hearing people in Ghana.

But the fact that instruction in Ghana’s specialized schools for the Deaf is still based on curriculum for hearing schools illustrates that Ghana’s language policy is still being used as what language policy researcher James Tollefson calls “a form of disciplinary power.”

This is to say the institutional neglect of a language policy supporting the needs of Deaf people continues to serve as a means of differentiating the Deaf from the hearing.

Much more can and must be done to recognize GSL. The Ghanaian government must implement accessibility standards to counter the alienation Deaf students face.

Mama Adobea Nii Owoo is a PhD student at the ��Ƶ's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As Ghana gets ready to set standards for child nutrition, U of T researcher shares his science on brain health

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 04:00:00 +0000

As Ghana gets ready to set standards for child nutrition, U of T researcher shares his science on brain health

noreen.rasbach Wed, 10/31/2018 - 00:00

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A group of children in their classroom in the village of Kpalong, 50 kilometres outside Tamale in northern Ghana (photo by Marcus Valance/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Topic

Research & Innovation

Ghana will soon adopt new standards on food and nutritional products for children, and the coming guideline on dietary fats for infants will be informed in part by a ��Ƶ researcher.

Associate Professor Richard Bazinet (pictured left) recently spent two days at the University of Ghana presenting the latest science on the role of fats in the developing brain, to policy-makers, nutritionists and others with a stake in food science and health in Africa.

Bazinet holds the Canada Research Chair in Brain Lipid Metabolism in the department of nutritional sciences at the Faculty of Medicine, and he is a researcher in the Joannah & Brian Lawson Centre for Child Nutrition. He spoke with Faculty of Medicine writer Jim Oldfield about infant feeding, the African diet and what research might do for mental health in the country of nearly 30 million.

Who organized the meetings in Ghana?

They were sponsored in part by Codex Alimentarius, which is the food standards program of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. It acts as a kind of ‘food code’ for the world, especially in developing countries that haven’t established their own guidelines on nutritional requirements and food safety. I talked about the state of the science on two fats, ARA from Omega-6s and DHA from Omega 3s – and what a child would need to eat to get optimal values of those fats in the brain.

Why are these fats important?

There are several fats in the brain, but ARA and DHA are called essential fatty acids because the body can’t make them. So we have to get them from food or supplements. There is evidence these fats improve cognitive and visual development, and central nervous system function. They are important in adults, but even more so in a growing brain, for healthy development. The complicated thing is that it’s impossible to do perfect studies showing how much a person needs because we can’t access the brain. So we look at models instead and estimate the intake requirements to get ideal brain levels.

How do you do that?

We actually have pretty good estimates on how much the brain needs, relative to dietary intake. The amounts in breast milk provide a good guide, although they can vary depending on the mother’s nutrition. But breast milk is a kind of gold standard. We can also look at infants post-mortem over time for some measurements in the body and brain, and then do back-calculations. These and other sources of data give us roughly similar answers.

How might these estimates inform Ghana’s guidelines on infant feeding?

They might reinforce the importance of breast milk. Breastfeeding rates have been declining in Ghana, and I think well under half of infants are exclusively breastfed at six months. Formula is another big issuebecause not all of it contains ARA and DHA, whereas those are standard in most developed countries. But including them in formula can increase its cost, so that’s an added challenge.

As for complementary feeding and infant diets broadly, there is a big knowledge gap. Almost all the available studies were done in the U.S. or Europe, or Canada. These countries have relatively good nutrition, and so the worry is that in countries with nutritional challenges – and one-third of children in Ghana are stunted or wasted or underweight – the role of essential fats could be even more important. It’s a theoretical argument, but chronic malnutrition in children without fat stores could pose really significant developmental risks, especially in those born premature and in need of more growth. Africa is really understudied in this context.

Are you looking to collaborate on research there?

Yes, and these meetings were helpful for making contacts with local scientists who want to look at fatty acid composition in the traditional African diet. It’s challenging because there isn’t a lot of funding for research. But it might be realistic to start categorizing the African diet and lipids. Ideally we would like to help set them up the equipment and skills to do this work on their own. They could pack up foods and ship them to us to start, but it would be more sustainable to train their students to do it.

I’ve also been emailing with psychiatrists I met at the University of Ghana. Their field is under-resourced, and the setbacks they see in infants can last a lifetime. Some of my work suggests Omega 3s are protective against brain inflammation, which increasingly appears to be at the root of depression and other neurological disorders. Medications to treat these conditions are often unaffordable in Ghana, but maybe we can work with nutrition to limit the burden of mental illness across the lifespan.

U of T student co-author of report on school-based sexual violence in Ghana

ullahnor — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 17:30:00 +0000

U of T student co-author of report on school-based sexual violence in Ghana

ullahnor Tue, 03/07/2017 - 12:30

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U of T PhD student Erin Aylward hopes that the Ghana government will take notice and the study will help lead to change (photo by Jennifer Kirschke via Flickr)

Elaine Smith

Author legacy

Elaine Smith

Topic

The extent of school-based sexual violence in Ghana has been documented for the first time in a report co-authored by U of T PhD student Erin Aylward.

The national study shows that:

56 per cent of female survey respondents and 37 per cent of male respondents had experienced sexual violence with most of these incidents (92 per cent and 91 per cent, respectively) occurring during the respondent’s school career
57 per cent of all cases took place during primary or junior high school
one in 11 girls, and one in 30 boys experienced sexual violence at the hands of a teacher or principal

“This is a massive issue that needs to be taken seriously,” says Aylward (photo at left), who was awarded a Trudeau Scholarship in 2015 that supports her research in political science. “Incredibly, for people working in the field, the numbers didn’t seem that shocking. There is a pretty clear need for leadership and for better accountability mechanisms.”

Aylward’s hope is that the Ghana government will take notice and the study will help lead to change.

She first learned of the issue when she worked as a gender advisor for Engineers Without Borders in Ghana after her master's degree. At the time, she discovered “that girls might even be expected to have sexual relations with relatives or family friends in exchange for school fees.”

“Anecdotally, it seemed the abuse was pervasive, but it was still a topic that wasn’t on most people’s radar,” Aylward said.

She went on to learn more about the issue of sexual violence in the schools during a U of T course on the sociology of sexuality in the Faculty of Arts & Science with Assistant Professor Hae Yeon Choo.

Aylward soon teamed up with Voto Mobile, a Ghana-based social enterprise, and the Gender Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre, a leading Ghana women’s rights non-governmental organization. They put together a proposal for Cellphones Against Sexual Violence, a two-year pilot project that included a national survey delivered through mobile technology, a sexual violence hotline and a school-based program. Amplify Change, a fund devoted to sexual and reproductive health, stepped forward to provide the finances.

The survey results have garnered interest from NGOs in Ghana, as well as from the Australian embassy and the Canadian High Commission in Ghana.

Baby monkeys grow faster to avoid being killed by adult males

sgupta — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 16:31:48 +0000

Baby monkeys grow faster to avoid being killed by adult males sgupta Thu, 03/17/2016 - 12:31

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“Typically, an adult male kills an infant sired by another male so that he can mate with the mother and sire his own infants with her,” PhD candidate Iulia Bădescu says (all photos by Stephanie Fox)

Kim Luke

Author legacy

Kim Luke

Topic

Breaking Research

Faculty of Arts & Science

Top Urban History Association Prize for Ato Quayson

sgupta — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 14:39:03 +0000

Top Urban History Association Prize for Ato Quayson sgupta Thu, 11/12/2015 - 09:39

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(photo by Diana Tyszko)

Elaine Smith

Author legacy

Elaine Smith

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Professor Ato Quayson, director of the ��Ƶ's Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies, spent his formative years in Accra, Ghana.

While he loves living in Canada, Ghana will always be his first home: a place that “had a major impact on my formation and sensibility. I only understood it piecemeal until I began researching for the book; then, different aspects became more and more visible to me.”

His book, Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism (2014, Duke University Press), is co-winner of the Urban History Association’s top award in the international category for books published in 2013-2014.

“Most cities of the world are best known through their writers,” said Quayson, a voracious reader. “Paris is Balzac and Zola, Dublin is Joyce and London is Dickens and Zadie Smith. I wanted to write about my city that way.”

With his book, Quayson invites readers to “tour Accra through my eyes. I wanted to be the scribe of my city.” Below, he shares some of the insights discovered as he researched and wrote his award-winning work.

This book underscores the fact that Canadians generally know very little about African life and culture. Why is it important to broaden our knowledge?
It is important, because Africa is the next frontier. The international geo-political landscape is changing fast, and Africa presents new markets and ways of being. This is apparent, given the amount of interest and investment China is making there.

The Americans are way ahead of Canadians here. Most of their universities, such as Harvard, Michigan, NYU, and Berkeley which are comparable to U of T, have introduced an important international component into undergraduate education over the past 20 years. They routinely send entire cohorts of students to Ghana and to Africa. These universities are building important bridges of understanding between Westerners and Africans. It is conceivable that these people will be the important policy-makers in the next 15 years, and they will know about Africa in a way that would be richer than the knowledge of those who have never been there before.

In addition, Statistics Canada states that by 2030, 50 per cent of Canada’s population will be immigrants, and it’s important to know how these immigrants feel about their homelands and what parts of their pasts they bring along with them.

You make a clear distinction between multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism. Why is one preferable?
Multi-ethnic societies simply have many ethnicities residing there. Multiculturalism is a feature of liberal democracies, a strategic aspect of state-building in countries that have accepted that homogeneity is not the most useful way of building a society. Multiculturalism involves accepting that ethnicity is a viable way of identifying oneself within the polity.

However, multiculturalism and xenophobia are mutually exclusive. South Africa aspires to multiculturalism, but there is too much xenophobia there. Canada, Australia and the United States have multicultural policies, while Russia, despite having many ethnic groups, does not.

Does your book have another purpose, in addition to providing a window onto Ghanaian culture?
In addition to exploring Accra, this book provides a method for reading African cities and the preliminary questions that can be asked about them. For example, what is the history of Africa’s mixed-race populations? What is their history and their contributions to the African’s cosmopolitanism? How did commercial districts arise? What are the leisure pursuits of youth in African cities? What are the inscriptions (e.g., signage, advertising) that you find in African cities?

The book thus offers a method for understanding cities that can be extrapolated to other places.

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Ghana

'Put yourself out there': U of T grad Maame De-Heer on how she built a career amid COVID-19

‘Going back to my centre’: How Suleyman Demi used PhD research at U of T to improve lives in Ghana

Read more about Convocation 2019

Read more about Suleyman Demi

Sign language needs policy protection in Ghana: U of T expert

Multiple sign languages in Ghana

No official sign language policy

Schooling challenges

Using GSL to resist ‘disciplinary power’

As Ghana gets ready to set standards for child nutrition, U of T researcher shares his science on brain health

U of T student co-author of report on school-based sexual violence in Ghana

Baby monkeys grow faster to avoid being killed by adult males

Top Urban History Association Prize for Ato Quayson