Education
Our Contribution To Education
To better the social and economic status of people living in underdeveloped communities, Social Justice for Poverty Alleviation in Our Communities has impacted the education sector by:
Student scholarships to University (Villages, poor urban areas):
Problem: Many students in poorer communities score well enough to get into university, but cannot attend because they are too poor and cannot afford tuition, books, transport, housing, etc. In addition, they have no-one to counsel them on the process for getting into university.
Meet “Mary” who lives in a small town 45 minutes from Accra. She receives good enough scores to go to university but she has no money to get the forms to apply (approximately 35 dollars per application per subject) nor does she know how to submit the forms because schools do not walk you through the process. Getting the forms, finding the funds, then heading to a Bank in the city to pay for the forms means spending more money. Even when she gets to fill them she does not know the deadlines. Without a phone or a way to contact the university, she waits, hoping to hear from them. Weeks go by and she does not hear from them. She realizes she has missed the dates. In any case she doesn’t have the tuition money so she decides to work for a year as a waitress and tries again. After a year of working as a waitress, she still does not have the money, but she decides to try again because someone has volunteered to pay for the forms for her. She pays for the forms and resubmits on time and to the right place, but then the university writes to tells her she can no longer be admitted, because she did not come the year before- the year she graduated. This is by letter, which takes ages to arrive and when she gets the letter it is too late to try to find transport money to chase down the appropriate office in a city that she does not know to ask more questions. She gives up.
In 2023 the program funded ‘Mary’s” younger sister to get a 2 year associates degree in Administration at the University of Ghana, Legon. At the time, Mary was still waitressing. Her sister successfully completed her degree and that spurred Mary, 3 years later, to finally have the confidence to apply to university as an older student. She is now at university.
2026: The program is now accepting scholarship applications from academically gifted students in the rural north (Upper West Region) of Ghana, a particularly underserved region. The program focuses on building awareness of the scholarship program in rural, public high schools; tracking potential students from SS2 into SS3 (final country wide exams for entry into university);supporting interested students in their efforts to apply to university; funding 4 year degrees in key sectors where there are likely job opportunities (e.g., health, education, science, engineering, business administration).
Libraries in underserved communities (books, toys and games)
Poor children in villages and urban areas have no access to libraries. There is one large public library in the capital of Accra and a few small libraries set up by NGOs but mostly in neighborhoods within the city of Accra. Outside of the city, there are no libraries in villages, or small towns.
To date: 1n 2020, we gave some financial support to the work started by two adolescents to establish a library in Kokrobite, a small fishing community. The Library was established in the grounds of a local pastor, who donated one of the rooms in his outdoor building to use as a library. It was a good location because many children visited there after church. Boxes of donations (books and lego kits, and other construction toys) were shipped to Ghana from the USA and the first Library in Kokrobite was started. The library attracts up to 40 or more children at a time. Children read children’s fiction (age 5-15) as well as educational books (science, math etc), construct legos, and are also given snacks. Children are allowed to borrow books and return them.
In 2026 We fund a library staff who opens the library to the children each week for reading and robotics. A new donation was recently made to the library of books, legos, and construction kits. The children love the robotics in particular and are quick to build complicated structures. Each library session begins with an hour of reading, which allows the children to improve their reading skills. After this, the children can choose any available activity. The library has so far cost nothing except for the employment of one staff. All this has been made possible by the donations of books, toys, games and stationary by the Chevy Chase Library in Washington DC, by parents of St. Albans School and by the residents of Chevy Chase.
