TTFPP- UNIVERSITY FOR DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

INTRODUCTION

The Third Trimester Field Practical Program (TTFPP) is an essential component of the curricular of the University for Development Studies. It draws its basis from the constitution (PNDC law 179),which mandate the University to blend the academic work with that of the community in order to provide a constructive interaction between the two for the total development of Northern Ghana in particular and  the whole country at large.

The program is divided into three main parts for three years, the first part involve coming out

with a profile of a community comprising of Natural Resources and Environment, Population Characteristics, Social Development, Economic Development and Historical and Local Governance system.

In year two (2), the idea is to deepen the students knowledge of the study community through more intensive interactions with the community members to enable students to appreciate the developmental problems that the community is confronted with and how this can be addressed using existing potentials within the community. These problems and potentials gathered in this second phase will serve as the basis for further work in year three (3).

The third year’s work aims at finding feasible interventions to the problems of the community identified in the previous year. The final stage therefore is a compilation of a reviewed profile of the community’s problems and potentials identified as well as development interventions proposed by students after an intensive deliberation with the community members. 

Objectives of the program include:

1. Helping students to develop favorable interest in working at rural Places.

2. To expose students practically to the nature of the development problems in deprived communities.

3. Providing useful services to rural communities through the exchange of knowledge in order to find solution to their problems,

4. Equip students with the basic tools, techniques and skills required for community studies and development.

5. To introduce students to community studies through interactions with communities.

6. To assist students to apply the method and experiences acquired to collect relevant data, and   on that basis write a comprehensive community profile of the studied community.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

I was privileged to be part of this program from 2008-2010 in group 123 consisting of ten students that were posted to Dadoto community a newly created district in the Krachi East of Volta region, during which we lived and worked in that community for two months each year.

In the beginning it was a bit challenging, working with new people altogether, getting to know the people in the community and adopting to the new environment as well as language barrier and of course the fact that the community lacks almost all basic social amenities such as; hydro-electricity community centre, cinema centre, communication centre, pit latrine, pipe borne water etc, but on the bright side the peaceful co-existence between the community members and the kind of cordial relation we established with them made our work much easier and in the end we were able to come out with the community’s profile, identified their problems and potentials and proposed some development interventions for the community, so I must say the whole exercise was successful.

KNOWLEDGE ACQUIRED

Living and working in a deprived community, collecting of relevant data and writing a report on a community’s profile, carrying out SWOT analysis and also writing a development proposal for a community.