r/ghana • u/Agreeable_Candle_230 • 19h ago
Discussion Group Contributions for Events
Hello All, I have a genuine concern and wanted to hear your thoughts on it. This is specifically about group contributions for colleagues from high school. It’s been 12 years since we completed high school, and we have a WhatsApp group we created to stay in touch. With time, people started posting weddings, outdoorings, and funeral invitations on these groups. I want to preface by saying that I truly understand the essence of community and support. These kind of events costs a lot, and it can feel refreshing for others to show up for you financially.
We started these contributions when there weren’t many events, like 1-2 weddings a year or 1 naming ceremony a year, but now it’s reached a point where we have like 2-3 a month because we are contributing for weddings, funerals of parents, etc. I raised the point that people (including me) are in several organizations and we are expected to contribute to all of them.
Besides, it’s been so long since we completed school and people have built relationships outside of school. People went to college, have friends and colleagues at work, have friends and community at church. These are the people we frequently interact with or have more recent connections with. Because of this, we should not let an institutional affiliation from 12 years ago hold us financially responsible for these things. I suggested that if someone has an event or loses a family member, they can post the invite, but we should not invoke the whole cohort to contribute. We should allow those who feel connected and close to that person to show up and support. The counter argument was that then the responsibility falls on just a few people. But if those few people are their friends, they should try to help in the capacity they can?
Maybe I’m not making sense and wondering if others here have faced similar situations and what they decided to do. Thank you
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u/TodayLoose7794 16h ago edited 13h ago
In my opinion if you can’t afford to do a wedding or naming ceremony 100% yourself then don’t do it. It can get expensive to contribute for various things multiple times in a year.
Funerals are different; however, even those should be cut down to the family’s affordability. Some people want to make it kuntain paa but expect others to pay for it.
I come from a very large family so virtually every week there is some kind of funeral, health emergency, wedding etc.,
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u/Koofi 15h ago
Your first sentence should be common knowledge/sense but Ghana ha ankasa 🤦🏿♂️
You have people taking bank loans and going into serious debt for weddings and christenings. Adɛn??•
u/TodayLoose7794 13h ago
It has become a competition. But people forget that there is nothing they will do at their wedding that hasn’t been seen before.
This is how a lady got upset with me for saying that I would never take a loan because of a wedding.
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u/No-Good-2984 19h ago
I can relate to this so much! They claim it’s optional, but have a list of who and how much they contributed posted in the group to sort of track compliance. This makes it an implicit obligation and gives room to name calling. For me, I’ve stopped contributing, although I contributed so much in the past until it got overwhelming, and have accepted that I won’t receive anything from anyone whenever I also have one of those events.
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u/be_you_tiful- 18h ago
I contribute sometimes but when I have my own events, I neither post, invite, nor solicit for any sorts of support and I know many who do same.
Sometimes I ask myself; do people actually plan events with budgets they feel will come from contributions?
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