By Barbara Dunlap-Berg
April 21, 2021 | ATLANTA
In 2020, Joshua Nii Ofori Suttah traveled 8,500 miles from his home in Ghana to attend the Rural Leader Training Program at the Asian Rural Institute in Japan. For this young man, every mile was worth it.
“Through this long journey,” he said, “I acquired a lot of new skills and ideas to transform my community.”
Suttah hails from Adenkrebi, population 400, near Accra, Ghana, in West Africa. He works with the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and worships with the Adenkrebi Gligal congregation. Thanks to a scholarship from Global Ministries, he had an opportunity to embark on nine months of intensive training at ARI.
Ninety-eight percent of the people in Suttah’s village, located in the mountains of eastern Ghana, are farmers. They “leave home in the morning to [labor in] their farms and come back in the evening to take care of their children and livestock,” he said.
The staple food is corn and cassava. Suttah cultivates vegetables and raises sheep and chickens. His knowledge as an electrician also helps to support his family.
“The positive achievement I get from farming,” he said, “is that most of the foodstuffs used at my house is from my farm without buying from outside.”
