Striving for greater visibility of volunteering at an international level, ICYE Ghana has two main goals. The first goal is to create more interest in volunteering among young people in Ghana and to host more young volunteers in the country. The second goal is to strengthen our relations with partners and ICYE National Committees in 38 countries around the world. The two goals are closely connected as strengthening relationships with other volunteering organisations means greater collaboration, which has the potential to lead to a higher number of young people volunteering in Ghana.

ICYE Ghana’s campaign will work to encourage more active engagement of volunteers in Ghana and provide them with a more active role in the organisation. The volunteers will be the think tank, involved in developing ideas on making the value of volunteering and ICYE Ghana more visible. A social media strategy will be developed together with the volunteers so that volunteers can share will their volunteering experiences on online platforms. The volunteers will write blogs/testimonials of their experience that will feature on the ICYE Ghana website.

The campaign will promote Ghana as an English-speaking country, where young people interested in sharpening English language skills can volunteer, thus providing an alternative to countries such as USA and UK.

ICYE Ghana would also like to receive a short-term volunteer on the ICYE STePs Programme, a young person with IT skills, who can help revamp ICYE Ghana’s website and make it more mobile-friendly and appealing to young people.

At the end of the campaign, ICYE Ghana will conduct a survey to examine whether it has succeeded in its goals of greater visibility and is sending and receiving more volunteers.

TIME TABLE

December 2016-January 2017:

• Inform volunteers to submit pictures and videos containing their daily activities in their projects at the Mid-Year/End of Year Camp.
• Receive and collate pictures and videos from volunteers containing their daily activities in their projects. The pictures will be received during the Mid-Term/End of Year Camp from 25^th to 29^th January 2017.
• Inform Partner NCs and prospective NCs about the Demand-Drive Approach, where ICYE Ghana will find a project for any volunteer who wants to come to Ghana and cannot find his/her desired project amongst the ones already existing. (The NC, which contacts ICYE Ghana, will be given positive feedback within two weeks maximum).

February-March 2017:

• Share the pictures and videos (received from the volunteers) with partner organisations and ICYE National Committees (NCs) to strengthen relationships and build relationships with new NCs in order to receive more volunteers from them
• Request feedback from NCs that it has communicated with on the photos and videos and the impact it made on prospective volunteers.

March-June 2017:

• Inform Partner and Prospective NCs about its interest in receiving an IT- inclined volunteer on the short-term (about 6 weeks) who will work in the ICYE Ghana Office to help revamp ICYE Ghana’s website:
  – Detailed and descriptive information about all the projects will be made available on our website. Moreover, our Demand-Driven Approach will also be made conspicuous on the homepage.
  – The blogs of current volunteers will be made available on the website.
  – A ‘Testimony’ section will also be allocated on the website where volunteers’ overall experiences will be described. The main aim of this will be to stress the fact that Ghana is the destination for volunteers wanting to improve on their English language skills.
  – ICYE Ghana website will also be made mobile-friendly.

August-September 2017:

• On arrival of volunteers during this period, ICYE Ghana will assess the impact of it’s visibility campaign. In other words, it will seek information about how and why they chose Ghana and assess if its strategy and campaign made any significant impact on their choice of Ghana as volunteering destination.
• Find out from volunteers at their end of year final evaluation camp how they believe ICYE Ghana can be made more visible and what attracted them to come to Ghana.

October- December 2017

• Monitoring the impact of its campaign and strategy:
  – whether it has reached other/more NCs through its campaign and strategy and created strong bonds for future cooperation
  – Whether it has created more visibility through it’s Facebook page (number of “views”, “likes”, “shares”)
  – Whether ICYE Ghana has become more popular by way of a larger number of visits on its website
• To assess the impact of our newly introduced ‘Demand-Driven Approach.’

All Year Round or Overlapping Activities

• Frequent posts on ICYE Ghana Facebook Page.
• Every incoming volunteer will be requested to follows ICYE Ghana on it’s Facebook page, “share” and “like” posts, and also encouraged to post their own activities as frequently as possible.
• Frequent communication with both partner and prospective NCs to strengthen bonds to make Ghana a preferred choice for their volunteers.

EVENTS/ACTIVITIES:

Social Media Activities

ICYE Ghana has been making volunteering and their organisation more visible by asking their own volunteers to make short videos and take photos of their day-to-day activities in their respective projects, which it has shared on Facebook and with other partner National Committees. Here are some of the photos ICYE Ghana has posted on their Facebook page:

Volunteering Video

ICYE Ghana has produced a new video about what it is like to be a volunteer in Ghana. The video features two current volunteers from Germany, who show what their everyday life is like being an ICYE volunteer in Colombus Orphanage in  Ghana.

See the video here: