Changing course...but not the destination

Patricia spends a great deal of time sharing her knowledge that has been gained over the past 7 years. Safety and appropriate personal protective equipment must be worn and used - even just one day exposure can change a persons whole approach to working with such tools. The skill set needed to successfully weld includes patience, precision, perseverance, outstanding hand-eye coordination and lots of attention to detail.

In the new year, AvTech will be shifting its focus away from full time courses and towards increasing exposure through short courses - to a wider range of candidates.

Patricia is planning some short (1 to 3 day) workshop exposure courses for teachers, lecturers and students from schools and universities around Ghana. Courses will cover welding, sheet metal working, milling, turning, how aircraft fly, how engines work as well as first aid and community health matters. We believe that linking STEM (science technology engineering and mathematics) with increased health education is key to stimulating positive change in the community.  

With Patricia as a role model in these courses we are sure that 2014 will be a year of great impact.

If you are interested in helping to fund - or to assist with - these short courses please contact capt.yaw@gmail.com

And then there was 10....

For the first we have taken a large number of apprentices, eleven young ladies into the academy at the same time.

We took a slightly larger number knowing that, not everyone of them would make it through to the end of the four year training successfully.

Today, one of the girls decided to go back and write remedial exams in order to go into nursing.

When we heard the news and knowing that this young lady is very able and is doing very well at the academy, we wanted to know more about the decision but she said she would rather put it in writing so, this is what she wrote;

Simple, life saving navigation skills. Class two, put to the test.

The young ladies today were given a map and blindfolded then driven around to a location where they don't recognise the terrain.

They then had to navigate their way back to the airfield using the maps given to them. It was very interesting seeing how they all worked as a team and moved as one body being each other's watch to trek through the bush safely to the airfield.

Eventually, they used the features around them and used all sorts of techniques such as climbing trees, standing on rocks to see x, y or z in the. Mu distance. They then saw the airfield from afar and runned towards.

This is no different to navigating by plane to a particular place and towards the end of the navigation, the pilot sees an obvious feature in a distance and aims for that object.

In the afternoon, they were introduced to handling metal work such as sanding and prepping it for painting.

Listen and learn... communicate and stay safe... Simple, Critical skills

When a new batch of apprentices starts at the academy, it is very important to get them to respond to commands to assess their their ability to follow simple instructions.

Most of the repair work we do on the aeroplane is such that, when a person is holding a plane up for the undercarriage to be changed, they cannot just drop it when tired.

The ladies all went through the stress test to determine the point at which they need helped.

New Term ... New Faces... Getting ready

This weekend 12 new girls are scheduled to arrive on site for training.  A long overdue set of drying lines are currently being made - in house of course - to make washing days less stressful, and they look as if they may even be airworthy!

So tell me.... what makes you happy?

In the academy, students are interviewed once every month to find out what their views about the progress on the airfield.

This month's one on one interview was very interesting because each student mentioned that, the things which makes them happy about the school is;
Food
Shelter
Family environment
Safety

We then compared the subject most liked were; flying in the actual cockpit
Workshop (servicing the engines, names of tools, building the planes....)

They expressed that, they like learning by doing because they gain more experience.

Time to tidy up...

The girls decided to take other sources of physical education seriously and so they wanted to do some

weeding exercise this morning around the their accommodation surroundings to make the place a lot more appropriate in order to keep snakes and other dangerous creatures away from the area.

Is very good that, the young ladies are taking initiatives in their chosen carrier to enable them become young professionals to help change the perception towards not educating girl children in this culture since girls are not given the same opportunities as boys gets. These ladies are becoming the pioneers of training of young ladies from rural Ghana.