The Next Generation of Community Leaders will be Local:

Since 2019, Yonkofa Project has been providing live lectures and hands on training for nurses and physician’s assistants through four government hospitals. Through meeting all these wonderful providers, we noticed very few were working in their own region of the country and virtually none in their own district. It occurred to us that no matter how many clinics we build, we will never have medical staff serving in their own hometown… unless we start working on local youth education. After discussions with college professors at the University of Ghana, reading comprehension in English was identified as major contributing factor to this disparity.  This makes sense, as most children in these remote areas go through school without ever owning a book.  And because of the lack of materials in school, course work is generally memorized and rehearsed/recited back to peers until exams.

We now understand that few kids, no matter how intelligent and motivated, will not make it to higher education from these remote areas, without some additional resources. We have tackeled this in several ways: The Keep Girls in School Program with Crafting Change helps prevent girls from quitting school in junior high.  The Yonkofa Public Library concept provides a source of books for enjoyment, study, and to enable teachers to design research projects and reports using this resource. Professor John Blackwell has taken the Yonkofa Library in Enchi and used it as a launching pad to listen to local teachers, find out what they need, and work with both students and teachers to facilitate reading and learning.

The teachers in Enchi wanted something very special, A SCIENCE LAB that all the schools could share. Currently, the students only have a pamphlet that tells them about the science experiments. There are black and white illustrations of beakers, bunsen burners, microscopes, etc. They never have a chance to have a hands-on experience with science! Professor Blackwell and his team in Ghana were able to find an unfinished building located at one of the schools. Constrution is in progress to rehabilitate and complete the building. As soon as the work is finished, it can be set up as the one and only school science lab in the district!