Monday, May 9, 2011

Elizabeth-Irene, two others win Burt Award

Saturday, April 30, 2011 (The Mirror Pg 47)

By Rebecca Kwei
“The more you read, the more you know” is a popular saying which the august gathering at the British Council for the launch of the Burt Award Winning Books made even more pressing as speaker after speaker emphasised the need to invest in books, revive creative writing and put information on Ghana on the shelves and stands globally.
For Prof Ablade Glover, Director of the Arts Alliance Gallery, what was more refreshing was the fact that, “we are seeing African writers tapping into our own African dreams and aspirations.
“A very special place of honour must be accorded these men and women who today are devoting time and energies to write for us, particularly young minds, and helping in a major way to win these young minds from the lures of alien cultures currently swallowing us, well almost”.
He expressed the hope that the award winning books will be made available for the young and that “when they are made available they will not lie on the shelves untouched, but they will be read and read copiously”.
Prof Glover urged policy makers to formulate policies and programmes that will plant African efforts in literature firmly in the educational system.
The President of the Ghana Writers Association (GAW), Mr Kwasi Gyan -Apenteng, who chaired the function said it was the position of the association and like-minded bodies like the Ghana Book Publishers Association to send a request to the government to institute a policy that will ensure that government buys a minimum of 1000 copies of every book published in Ghana that passes a quality threshold.
He said the association was keen on being part of the educational agenda of the country and has started a schools outreach programme which showed that many schools have Writers Clubs.
Consequently, Mr Gyan-Apenteng said the association would re-launch a magazine, Takra, which used to be a GAW literary publication in the 70s to encourage young writers to publish their stories, poems and reviews.
Again he said the Ghana Literary Awards would be revived.
The Deputy Director General of the Ghana Education Service, Mr Charles Tsegah, said the ministry would collaborate with the Ghana Book Trust to provide some of the copies of the winning titles for school libraries to complement efforts being made under the Ghana Education Service’s National Literacy Acceleration Programme (NALAP) to improve the reading skills and habits of the youth.
The Executive Director of the Ghana Book Trust, Mr Robert Amoako, said Bill Burt established the awards after he had visited some African countries and saw the need for relevant reading materials.
The Burt Award honours, which is co-ordinated by the Ghana Book Trust, supports the writing and publication of excellent young adults literature by and for Africans. It is sponsored by CODE, a Canadian NGO, with support from a Canadian Philanthropist, Bill Burt.
The awards are restricted to authors who are Ghanaian citizens and resident in Ghana.
For the maiden edition of the award, Elizabeth-Irene Baitie won the first prize with her book The Twelfth Heart. She received GH¢16,000.
Kwabena Ankomah-Kwakye’s The Deliverer took the second prize of GH¢8,000 while The Mystery of the Haunted House written by Ruby Yayra Goka received the third prize of GH¢4,000.
Mr Amoako said the trust had purchased 3,000 each of the three award winning books to be donated to schools and libraries across the country.
He said as part of the Burt Award, the trust also organises training for writers and editors to improve their capacity to write.
The awards have also been established in Tanzania and Ethiopia.

Dream! We'll make it happen

Saturday, April 30, 2011 (The Mirror Pg 46)

By Rebecca Kwei
Do you have a dream? One that can have your home totally transformed for you?
Then continue to dream big, because it may soon come true, thanks to a new series on television, Dream Makeovers.
Dream Makeovers is a family-oriented infotainment show that rewards beneficiaries with a free makeover.
The show, which started airing on GTV in February this year and is aired at 6.30 p.m. every Saturday, seeks to, among others, celebrate unsung heroes in society and show that every home can be transformed using the basic elements of design.
The beneficiaries range from people with touching stories, local philanthropists, professionals who show exceptional commitment on and for the jobs they do in public or private service and celebrities who are making significant contributions to society.
So far, nine beneficiaries have been rewarded with a total transformation of their homes.
They are Ghana’s first policewoman, Madam Rose Nkansah, whose bedroom was transformed and also provided with a new bathroom; Daniel Boahene, a teacher of the St John’s Grammar School who has taught for 25 years, was rewarded with two fully furnished bedrooms for his children; the Teshie Orphanage had its living room given a new look; Basics International at Chorkor in Accra also had its hostel transformed, while Mrs Kate Duggan, a philanthropist, also had her living room changed beautifully.
The others are Tina Odamtey, a hair stylist for children who had her living room changed to make it more child-friendly; Dr Mawuli Ametepey, a surgeon at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, was rewarded with a brand new living and dining room; Mr Nat Botchway had a new office set for the Help Age branch at Bubuashie, a suburb of Accra, while Steven Grant, who runs a school for children of squatters, received a new single room plus kitchen.
“As an interior designer, I realised that many people wanted to know how to transform their living areas without the transformation costing them an arm and a leg. From experience, I knew how and wanted to teach little tricks on how to transform a home at very little cost,” Zoe Akosua Akumia, the creator and host of the show, said concerning how it all started.
She said in order to teach how to redo a home, she needed someone’s house and the idea of also rewarding someone who was making a positive impact on society came.
On how those beneficiaries got rewarded, Zoe explained that people nominated the beneficiaries, giving reasons, after which the story was investigated to find out if it was credible.
Dream Makeovers is designed such that viewers get to know the beneficiary, why he or she was selected and the impact the show will have on people’s lives. It is also interlaced with good housekeeping, design and home improvement tips.
The excitement on the faces of the beneficiaries when they see their makeover homes is a sight to behold.
As I watched the episodes, the surprises, excitement and appreciation on the faces of the beneficiaries, their families and friends gave me goose bumps all over.
“I am so excited! God bless you!” were the words of Tina Odamtey, a beneficiary, as tears welled up in her eyes.
For the children of the Teshie Orphanage, they could not have been happier and more thankful for their new environment.
“I love doing things for people and when the beneficiaries get all excited about their new homes, that is the high point for me,” Zoe said.
Season One of Dream Makeovers ends on May 7 and, according to Zoe, she had invested a lot of money in the project, adding that for Season Two to be feasible, she would need a lot of funding.
“I intend to take Dream Makeovers across the whole country so I’m appealing to corporate Ghana to come on board to help make the dreams of unsung heroes a reality,” she said.
She was grateful to her sponsors — Latex Foam, Syriatex, Global Lighting Centre, Sikelele, West African Decor Tiles and Manet.
Why don’t you make a date with GTV at 6.30 p.m. tonight to find out who the 10th beneficiary of a dream makeover will be?

Journalists promote use of bednets

Saturday, April 30, 2011 (The Mirror Pg 34)

From Rebecca Kwei, Ahwiam
As part of the World Malaria Day celebrations which fell on Monday, April 25, members of the African Media and Malaria Research Network (AMMREN) in collaboration with other partners promoted the use of bednets in some communities of the Dangme West District.
Malaria affects about three million people annually in Ghana resulting in about 38,000 deaths most of whom are women and children under five. Studies have shown that the use of insecticide treated nets reduced mortality in children under five by about 20 per cent and malarial illnesses among children under five and pregnant women by up to 50 per cent.
One thousand Long Lasting Insecticide Treated Nets (LLITNs) were provided by Exxon Mobil through NetsforLife, a partnership for malaria prevention which were hung in the homes of the people of Ahwiam and other communities in the Dawa and Osuwem Area Councils of the district.
In times past ITNs were distributed to people to hang themselves but they were not being used for the purpose for which they were meant and this has resulted in a paradigm shift in the strategy for deploying ITNs known as the Hang Up method being championed by Netsforlife.
Under this volunteers actually go to homes and hang up the ITNs over the sleeping areas of households.
For the Executive Secretary of AMMREN, Mrs Charity Binka, the event was very important since this time round, journalists were not only there to report but were part of the process getting the ITNs to the people of the community.
She called on the government to waive taxes on ITNs and other anti-malarials as has been done in other African countries so that children and pregnant women would not die needlessly of malaria.
“After 11 years of the Abuja Declaration, why are we still dying of malaria? We need to engage policy makers and hold them accountable to the declarations they have signed” Mrs Binka said.
Stressing on the need to use ITNs, the Director of the Dodowa Health Research Centre, Dr Margaret Gyapong, said globally and nationally countries were striving to meet the MDG targets and with regard to malaria, the promotion and use of LLINs was one of the control measures.
She said national data showed that the use of ITN increased successively from 3.5 per cent in 2002 to a peak of 55.3 per cent in 2007.
However, the proportion of children under five years sleeping under ITNs declined significantly to 40.5 per cent in 2008. Similarly, ITN use among pregnant women has been encouraging until 2008 where it declined drastically to 30.2 per cent from a peak of 52.5 per cent in the 2007.
On her part, the District Director of Health Services, Dangme West District, Dr Evelyn K. Ansah, emphasised in the local dialect that malaria was caused by the female anopheles mosquito which liked to breed in clean and not dirty water contrary to local beliefs that malaria was caused by working in the sun, eating unripe mangoes and eating oily food.
The Monitoring and Evaluation Manager of NetsforLife, Mr Samuel Asiedu said the organisation in collaboration with its partners had distributed 4.8 million LLINs across 17 African countries with 1.2 million of those in Ghana.
This year’s World Malaria Day had the global theme “Achieving Progress and Impact” while the event had the sub theme of “Ensuring Universal Coverage of Bednets”.
It was organised in collaboration with the Dodowa Health Research Centre, the District Health Service with funding from the Malaria Clinical Trials Alliance (MCTA) of the INDEPTH Network.

Daring ‘419’ at Ghana Music Awards - As VIP snap top prize

By Rebecca Kwei
Despite the tight security measures organisers adopted to check overcrowding at last Saturday’s MTN Ghana Music Awards by ensuring that ticket sales matched the number of seats available at the Dome, some cheats still managed to print and sell fake tickets.
Close to 100 fake tickets from punters were confiscated from patrons who had purchased them from a young man who is currently in custody at the Ministries Police Station in Accra while investigations go on.
This year’s cache seems to be the largest of all incidences of fake tickets impounded by Charterhouse security at any of their public events.
It will be recalled that Charterhouse, organisers of many other special events, had always been criticised for poor protocol management.
People who attended their events and faced difficulty finding seats accused Charterhouse of selling more tickets than there were seats.
Although Charterhouse had explained that no matter how hard they tried to put things in place, people always managed to beat the system by either coming in through the backstage or some unauthorised exit.
This year’s event, which took place at the Dome, a huge makeshift tent marquee set on the car park of the Accra International Conference Centre, saw yet another full house.
While efforts were made this year to stop people from entering the main hall through unauthorised routes and exits, a good number still managed to infiltrate using the fake tickets, perhaps, unknowingly.
“If you consider that our quota for paid VIP tickets was only 150 seats, the remaining seats in that area were reserved for nominees, award presenters and sponsors. You can begin to appreciate that we cannot afford to have even one seat unaccounted for. Someone would have bought an official ticket for that seat so anyone who takes up that one seat, with a fake ticket, causes a major problem for our protocol arrangements,” explained Ms Hedwig Quist, head of security and protocol for the event. 
“Now that the kingpin of ticket racketeering has been caught, perhaps, it will make our protocol work easier,” she added.
All that notwithstanding, the show took off to a flying start, kicking off with a brilliant performance from Sherifa Gunu, Bertha and Efya who did a medley of Osibisa tunes namely Welcome Home, Osa (Warrior Song) and Celebration which saw the legendary leader of Osibisa Teddy Osei himself joining the girls, and blowing his trumpet!
Teddy Osei received the Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of Osibisa, and it was presented to him by the former Vice President of the International Federation of Musicians (FIM), Alhaji Sidiku Buari.
And so the performances and receiving of awards went on till the end of the night when the sensational boys from Nima, the group VIP (Vision In Progress), came up to receive the ‘Artiste of the Year’ award – their second time – having earlier picked up the one for  ‘Hiplife/Hiphop Artiste of the Year’ award.
MC for the night was the inimitable KKD!
Here’s the full list of winners for the night:
Artiste of the Year - VIP
Most Popular Song - 'Aha Ye De', Nana Boroo
Discovery - Herty Borngreat
Hip hop /Hiplife Song - 'Africa Girl' by Castro and Asamoah Gyan
Hip hop/Hiplife Artistes - VIP
Hip-hop Song - 'Get On the Dance Floor' D' Black
Gospel Song - 'Efunuba' Cecilia Marfo
Gospel Artiste - No Tribe
Highlife Song' – ‘Dadeanoma' Kwabena Kwabena
Highlife artiste - Kwabena Kwabena
Afro-Pop Song – ‘Kiss Your Hand’, R2Bees
Reggae Song - IWAN
Best Collaboration - 'Africa Girls', Castro and Asamoah Gyan
Best Rapper - Trigmatic
African Artiste - K'Naan
Record - Sammi B
Album – ‘CEO’, Samini  
Song Writer – ‘Efunuba’ by Pastor Boamah
Best Male Vocal Performance - KNii Lante
Best Female Vocal Performance - Efya
Producer - Zapp Mallet
World Bank Music for Development Award - Reggy Zippy, with GH¢3,000. All the other nominees took home GHC¢300. Abraham Ohene-Gyan of OM Studios took home GH¢5,000 for helping to promote 100 per cent indigenous Ghanaian music on his Fiesta TV platform.