Each year, the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship awards three $5,000 seed grants to fund the launch or early-stage growth of a project, program, or venture. YAF Ghana, run by Ferdinand Quayson ’20, was one of this year’s winners. This is Ferdinand’s first report since receiving funding from the PCSE in March 2018.

 

The past two months have been a very busy period for Young Achievers Foundation (YAF) Ghana. Since winning the seed grants in March, we have successfully fundraised over $10,000 in cash and in-kind donations.  We have also received over 1,000 SAT/ACT books as well as other college prep and application books from the Taft School. The book donation is part of an ongoing relationship between YAF Ghana and the Taft School in support of our effort to create libraries to give students from all corners of Northern Ghana access to college prep and scholarship materials.

YAF Ghana also successfully launched the ambassador program in April. The YAF Ghana ambassadors include students from various public and private high schools across Connecticut including the Taft School, Crosby, Waterbury Career Academy and many more. The ambassadors represent YAF Ghana in their respective schools and help support our fundraising effort by organizing programs to collect books and other items including used laptops which are crucial to our scholarship workshops in Ghana.

We have also collaborated with Ashinaga Africa Initiative, an organization helping to provide fully funded university scholarships to 49 high school students from Sub-Saharan African countries to school in various Universities in Japan, the U. K., the U.S. and Brazil. As a representative for the Initiative in Ghana, YAF Ghana will be responsible for  the preparation of applicants and selection of students for the program.

With regards to our summer scholarship workshops, we currently have interns from various Universities in Ghana, including the university of Ghana, KNUST, Ashesi University, and the University of Development Studies. We also have interns from college in the United States including Wesleyan, Tuft, Cornell, Williams, Penn State, and many more. These interns together with our volunteers will be directly responsible for leading our scholarship workshops and providing mentorships to the over 10,000 students who will be taking part in our workshops and seminars this summer.  The workshop will span a period three months and include 20 different high schools from the three Northern Regions.

We are also currently in the process of working with the Ministry of Education, the EducationUSA and the Ghana Scholarship secretariat to organizing our first ever higher education summit. This summit will bring together stakeholders in the scholarship sector in Ghana to educate students, and create awareness of the various scholarship program that exist within Ghana and abroad to help students pursue higher education. The summit will take place in Northern Ghana (Tamale) and in Accra. We hope to televise both events on national Television to help reach audience that are beyond the reach of our program in Northern Ghana.

We are very excited by the progress we have made so far and super grateful to the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship for the support to make this program possible. We cannot wait to update you on all the exciting things we hope to accomplish this summer.