About LTT
In its 10th year, Laɣim Tehi Tuma (“Thinking Together” in Dagbani* and also known as "LTT"), is an undergraduate community-powered learning and inquiry fellowship program and non-governmental organization grown out of a grassroots collaborative between Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges and local educators in the rural community of Dalun, Ghana. The program is now also supported by a growing team of educators from University of Development Studies–Tamale (UDS), community-powered NGOs and collectives in Dalun, and other higher education institutions in Pennsylvania, U.S.A. LTT is emerging as a threshold between these communities and individuals sharing a vision toward reconceptualizing education—formal/informal, community-based, and self-directed—centered by Black diasporic liberation and study.
The mission of LTT is to create a platform for collaborative thinking that co-creates education through study, intercultural exchange, internships within community-based partnerships, and through engaging Black study/ies to open questions about what education has been, is, and can be. LTT is designed to be an intervention in colonial pasts and to foster movement towards just and thriving futures.
Through study, action, and reflection, LTT engages several themes. The process of thinking together about education entails engagement with questions of history, culture, race, class, gender, and other dimensions of identity; of language, colonialism, nationality, and post-coloniality; and of the discourses of development, post-development and indigeneity.
Strands of the LTT Braid
Committee Work
Committees have included:
Communication
Responsibilities include: planning for and facilitating reflective sessions, collaborating with Communications Assistant, & keeping minutes for those who can’t attend meetings.
Research
Responsibilities include: planning for text sharing and facilitating academic discussions.
Health & Safety
Responsibilities include: encouraging practices that facilitate varieties of wellness throughout the program and checking in with other members.
Black is Beautiful
Responsibilities include: facilitating workshops and liaising between internship sites to incorporate topics into their projects.
Marketing
(Active during fully in-person engagement)
Budgeting
(Active during fully in-person engagement)
Topics have included (but are not limited to):
Diaspora Ubuntu Philosophy & Pan-Africanism Education
"Development" Religion Women's Empowerment
"Decolonization" Liberation Black Studies/Black Study
Professional Development
Throughout the program, fellows will develop a project based on a personal question relating to their interests, research, and learning.
2021 topics included:
Pan-Africanist Curriculums Africans’ Perspectives on Indigenous Medicine
National and Political Perspectives of Slavery in Ghana Witchcraft in Dagbon
Pan-Africanism and Ubuntu Philosophy in Everyday Life
Girl Child Education in Northern Ghana Ghanaian Enslavement Camps
Online vs In-person Interactions The History of Formal Education in Ghana
2020 topics included:
Ancestry & Artifacts Migration within Ghana Contextualizing Blackness
Child Welfare Context of Enslavement in Northern Ghana Colorism
Shea Tree Economy in Dalun Changing Narratives around Blackness
Regional Immersion & Contextualization
Examples include:
Orientations
Tours
Talks
Excursions
*For some Dagbani language context:
There are many ways to spell in Dagbani. Often “g”, “ɣ”, and " ' are used interchangeably in written representations. E.g. “Lagim” and “Laɣim” / “Titagya” and “Titaɣya”