What am I up to in Ghana?

Some of you may be aware that I am going to be working overseas for a few months this summer, but many of you are not. I therefore thought it was appropriate to send a note around explaining what I am up to.

I am going to be working in Ghana in West Africa on a project which is trying to integrate the mentally ill and those with epilepsy into the primary healthcare system. This project is under the umbrella of PwC's Ulysses programme where the worldwide firm places small teams of partners into projects in the developing world. I will therefore be working with two other partners: an assurance partner from Mexico and a private clients services partner from New Zealand.

What is the problem?
The development of psychiatric provision in Ghana has been ad hoc and blighted with constraints. The stigma and ignorance surrounding mental illness has resulted in severe marginalisation of mentally ill people and their ostracism from the community. This has also led to low recruitment levels for mental health workers and contributed to the lack of interest in mental health issues, thus resulting in poor incentives for its workers from the government as well as meagre budget allocations for mental health. Out of a population of 20 million people, currently, there are a total of only 15 psychiatrists, 339 psychiatric nurses, six social workers and three clinical psychologists.

Who will I be working with?
I will be working together with a UK-based charity called BasicNeeds. This charity works all over the developing world and aims to alleviate the suffering of people with mental illnesses, assuring their basic needs are satisfied and their basic rights are met. Because mental illness comes with a strong stigma, part of their work is to spread awareness regarding the options people have to overcome the disease and continue living a sustainable dignified life. You can find out more about this organisation here: http://www.basicneeds.org.uk/

What is the project trying to achieve?
The objective of the project is for our team to serve as the main facilitator in bringing together the donor community and Government, and helping create enough interest from them to adopt mentally ill people as a vulnerable group. This would enable mentally ill people to be included in Ghana's Poverty Reduction Strategy, which focuses their care in the community.

How long am I away for?
I will be in Ghana until late August, after which I will take a few weeks holiday to spend time with my wife who has to stay in the UK. Whilst clearly this is not enough time to sort out all of the issues in a whole country, the objective is to bring together diverse group of people and facilitate the recognition of the problem. In my experience working with troubled companies, you may not be able to turn a business around in a couple of months, but in that timeframe you can develop a turnaround plan and get people bought into implementing it. Because we will be fully integrated with the local BasicNeeds team, we will try very hard to avoid finding the solution and giving it to someone else to implement; rather our approach will be for the local team to find the 'solution' with us.

What is PwC's Ulysses programme?
About five years ago the firm around the world recognised that it had a number of longer term strategic challenges. I have set three of them out here:

* Building a sustainable business: how can we build a differentiated sustainable brand that is based on more than short term profitability, that is recognised for its responsible leadership in the way we lead with our clients, our people and the communities within which we operate?

* Embracing diversity: how can we tap into the full potential of our diverse network and the true competitive force of our firm, by building a diverse pool of future leaders connected across organizational and national boundaries?

* Building business leaders: how can we develop our own people to deal with an increasingly complex global stakeholder environment?

The Ulysses programme was one response to these challenges. This year, 24 partners from 19 countries around the world will be working in teams of three or four partners on projects in South Africa, Madagascar, Cameroon, Ghana, India, China, Peru and Paraguay.
You can find out more about this programme from the PwC website here, where you can also see that the projects in developing countries are only one part of the programme: http://www.pwc.com/extweb/manissue.nsf/docid/BC88E81BDDE3FC7E8525706D005467CD

Hopefully this gets across a flavour of what I will be doing, and that it may also answer one two recurring questions I get:
1. "will I be building mud huts?" (Answer: no - I am useless at DIY), and
2. "is this a holiday / career break?" (Answer: also no - my suitcase is full of work shirts not just T-shirts!).

When I return to the UK I expect I will have many stories to tell, and for those of you in BRS, I suspect a Planet.BRS interview will be looming.

A quick note on this Blog. I have never done one of these, and it has taken a while to set this thing up (it wasn't working at all earlier). Please bear with me if it doesn't get updated too often as I will be travelling around rural Ghana (internet access unclear as yet), or I won't know how to work it (much more likely!).