Great People of Greatness, a WhatsApp group with the slogan (The Love is Deep), has donated some hospital items to the Cancer Unit of the Children’s Ward at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.

The items, estimated at GH¢6, 000, include a fridge, a water dispenser, 40 pieces of bed sheet, five hand sanitizers, 14 bottles of disinfectants, four digital baby scales, five thermometers, two boxes of gloves, two bottles of spirits and a BP apparatus.

According to the group, the purpose of social media (WhatsApp) groups is to establish collective conversations but they thought they need to move a step further to meet certain needs in the society.

In an interview with the DAILY HERITAGE after presenting the items to the unit, Madam Lois Beryl Nortey, president of the group, said “our main vision is to help the less fortunate ones, and our agenda is to put smile on their faces and also to help each other.”

Madam Nortey, affectionately called Afua Sika Tirmudew, explained that the gesture was to celebrate the group’s one year of existence and they decided to donate and make the cancer unit a conducive place for the patients.

She said “apart from helping the less fortunate ones, we also help each other; when our member is having a naming ceremony, a funeral or a wedding, we contribute and we attend it as well.

“Today, (Sunday, November 3, 2019) is our one year anniversary, exactly a year today, I organised a few friends and we started this WhatsApp group and we decided to come to Korle-Bu Children Ward, the Cancer Unit to donate some items to them,” she stated.

She told the paper that the group’s main source of funding is individual contributions and that “for you to be part of this group you have to be someone who works and is financially sound, because our main vision is to help the less fortunate ones and also to help ourselves.”

Touching on the challenges in handling the WhatsApp platform, she said it had not been easy but through the effort of God, the platform had stood the test of time.

She said even though “when we started we were about 177, the chaos and the fights, the accusations and the criticism were “just too much but it has taken God. God is the pivot of this Great People of Greatness WhatsApp group, which is why we have come this far but the one year of ups and downs is a whole lot, but God won it for us.”

She observed that even though there are a lot of WhatsApp groups, “they use them for so many ruthless diabolic things. When you go to those WhatsApp groups, the only thing they do is hook-ups, going to hotels, sleeping with one another and doing all sorts of silly things.”

The president, however, prayed and wished that “there will be more WhatsApp groups but they will use them for something positive to impact lives”, something which is the core mandate of ‘Great People of Greatness.’

While recounting other programs the group had embarked upon in its one year of existence, Mrs Nortey said two months after the group started in November last year, “we went to Bawjiase Orphanage and donated items worth GH¢10, 000 and in Easter, we fed 702 people on the streets.

Korkor Badger, a nursing officer at the cancer unit of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, who received the items on behalf of the unit, expressed gratitude to the group for the gesture and called on others to emulate them..

“On this note, we are encouraging other sponsors to do their best but we are so much grateful, the children are grateful and they are forever going to be grateful for these items. We encouraging other groups to emulate this worthy example. The little that you can give to us will go a long way to help these children.”

According to her, the parents spend a lot and have difficulty in financing the medication and treatment.

“The truth of the matter is that they [the children] do depend on us a lot and because we are health workers. We depend a lot on sponsors and then donors to run the day-to-day activities of the ward, especially with regard to their [the children’s] medication.

Madam Badger said “cancer treatment is not covered by the national health insurance so the parents, together with the sponsors, struggle to cater for the children.”