Local Tourism Center Project
The summary below was provided by the Peace Corps Volunteer and the community administering this project.
Map of GHANA
Our town is a developing ecotourism site where visitors learn about the history of the site and the ancestors of the people that inhabit it. There are two main tourist focus areas; the first being the origin of the people, and the second being the history of the city.
The origins of the community members can be traced back to the sacred hole, which is located five kilometers northwest of town. It is said that the people came from this hole and lived off the land for forty days before they decided to find a new land to settle on. After some searching they settled in an area nearby.
The city they settled in thrived for over 500 years and reached a size of 77 streets wide, where people from Europe and Asia came to trade their goods for gold and kola nuts among other local goods. However, the city met its fall after a civil war broke out, which led to people deserting the city and settling in other areas. After fifty years, the people of the city searched for their home and settled in a town whose name means ¿is it here¿ in the local language. The history is fascinating and the people of the town have pride in where they came from.
The project team would like to develop a Tourism Center to receive tourists coming to visit the village and provide them with useful information about the community and the sacred area. The capacity of the Tourism Management Committee will be built to understand the fundamentals of business skills and how to run a tourist site professionally. They will learn customer service and business skills like book-keeping. With these newly acquired knowledge and skills, the project will be well managed and sustainable.
This Peace Corps Partnership Program grant will allow the raising of funds to build the Tourism Center. The community is contributing materials and labor for the project. This is a great step for the town and will allow them to grow in the tourism industry and, in the future, lead to further development and expansion of the community.
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