Week 3

Date: 1/23/11 - 1/29/11

Hours Worked: 29

Total: 139

Week's Activities:  

     This week has been life changing for me. In addition to teaching our first workshop I also gained many insights into the development world and how things really function. Our first workshop started off with 13 students and then within about 15 minutes we were down to 12. We thought he was just going to the bathroom but then he never came back. By the end of the week we had ten participants complete all of the exercises and graduate from the workshop. It was great to take the things we learned during our training in Salt Lake and put them into practice. It was much harder but also much more rewarding then I thought it would be.
     On Saturday we had the opportunity to go to the MTC with the Area Medical Advisor. He was going there to speak with the missionaries about health and give them their first round of hepatitis B shots. His wife was the one who actually gave the shots and we assisted her in that task. It was wonderful to meet the missionaries and see their wide eyes on their first real day in the MTC.

Lessons Learned:

     Starting a business in Ghana is much harder than I expected it to be. I know it is hard to start a successful business anywhere but the factors that make it hard are so much different here in Ghana than they are in the United States. Thursday's discussion made me grateful to live in America in a way that I had never thought of before. We were discussing ideas of how we can set our business apart from the competition. They kept making comments about how you need to come up with an idea, make lots of money from it, and then walk away from the business. I was so confused by this sentiment and was really struggling to understand why they all seemed to think that this was a great idea. It all become clear when one of the participants raised his hand and explained that in Ghana they have intellectual property laws but they are rarely enforced. If someone designs something new the government will not protect their idea. The barriers to entry are so low that it's almost not worth inventing something new because others will just copy you and make just as much money with a smaller initial investment. I had never thought about being grateful for patent laws and protections but this whole discussion really opened my eyes. Government in America may have its good things and bad things but overall they are doing a pretty decent job at giving Americans opportunities to succeed.