Promoting College Access & Youth Development

Hello everyone,

Young Achievers Foundation Ghana is one of the largest college access and youth development programs in Ghana. Our organization works to provide resources, counseling, and academic support to students from under-resourced communities throughout Ghana. The goal of YAF Ghana is to help students access higher education and to guide them in using their college educations to address issues faced within their home communities and across Ghana. During this year alone, we have helped our scholars secure more than eighteen full ride scholarships to pursue world-class education at institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth and Northwestern. We are hoping to raise $7,000 so that we can continue doing this important work!

Learn more about Young Achievers Foundation Ghana here: https://yafghana.org/

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ferdinand Quayson. In 2016, I had the life-changing opportunity to study on a full scholarship at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. Overnight, I went from an orphan who spent most of his childhood struggling on the streets of Accra to a student at one of the best universities in the world. I've since gone on to build YAF Ghana into the large scale program that it is today while simultaneously strengthening my skills in developmental project implementation through my work with the MasterCard Foundation and the Ghana Enterprise Agency. Because of YAF Ghana, children of refugees now have access to Ivy League educations. We have already helped our students secure over $5,000,000 in college scholarships this year alone.

I’m a living testimony to the large-scale transformation that can come from access to a college education. However, due to a lack of resources and financial support, the vast majority of deserving students in Ghana are rarely able to pursue higher education in any capacity. Even for motivated, talented, and creative students, pursuing a college career is practically impossible.

YAF Ghana works to address this education access gap. To help our scholars access college educations, YAF Ghana provides them with:

For the past five years, I’ve seen tremendous transformation in the lives of the students who have participated in my program. Scholars come to YAF Ghana with the goal of helping to transform their local communities, and we help translate these dreams into action by teaching them to leverage all of the resources available through a college education. Already, our scholars are making vast steps in addressing issues like child rights, climate change education, and water security. Earlier this year, Enoch Aho, a YAF Ghana scholar at Ashesi University, partnered with an MIT alum to provide clean water by creating a borehole well in his village of Juo in Northern Ghana. We look forward to seeing more YAF Ghana scholars pursue their self-driven projects as they continue their college journeys.

Why we need your help:

With no major corporate support, YAF Ghana operates on donations from family, friends, and well-wishers. I’m calling on your support to help me raise $7,000 to continue providing these students with the resources necessary to help them access higher education. 100% of the money raised will go directly to:

I’m truly grateful for anything you can give to support this program. Please let me know if you would like to stay in touch and get regular updates of the successes of our scholars moving forward. Thank you for donating to support my work.

***If you prefer to send your donation via Venmo, please do so @fquayson. You can also Zelle me @[email redacted]. For PayPal, you can use the following link https://www.paypal.me/fquayson. For MobileMoney donations, use the following details 0558475705 (Recipient: Ferdinand Quayson)

“When you educate one person you can change a life, when you educate many you can change the world”- Shai Reshef