Give These Kids a Roof!

Hi, this is John Barney, a returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Ghana. My former community called Anyima, is located in central Ghana in what is known as the Bono East Region. The most important project for my community was to build an Elementary School for the students of St Anthony's. For years they have been attending school "under the trees" using old wooden desks and portable chalk blackboards. Neither conducive to learning nor safe due to sudden and violent tropical storms, snakes, scorpions and so forth, the community with my help initiated a project to build a 6 classroom Elementary School.

Unfortunately, after completing the foundation and walls, the community ran out of funds and was not able to finish the building. Today, grade 1 through 6 students continue their education, leaning English, Math and Science "under the trees."

The Ghanaian students are thirsty for knowledge but their life is challenging and the road to learning made more difficult by the lack of resources and even a roof over their heads. Since returning from Ghana I have been working as a substitute teacher and am impressed by the extensive resources freely available to American students and am pained to think of how hard the Ghanaian students work and how much they accomplish with the little that they have. Some of the best students do not even have power in their homes.

The community has provided construction labor and food for workers to enable the construction of the foundation and walls. They will continue to contribute as much as they possibly can including what little funds they can collect from the community. However, they need help to purchase the materials needed to complete the roofing and floors of the classrooms. This is how the funds will be used. Our detailed estimate is that it will cost about $2,900 to complete the roof framing and panels and about $3,200 to complete the floors, windows and doors.

The cost is very low for this amount of construction because inflation which has plagued the United States has devastated developing countries. In the past year, the Ghana Cedi has gone from 7.52/$ to 11.85/$, about a 58% inflation rate! It is hard to imagine living in such a situation but it also means that donations of dollars which are relatively very high in value will have a huge impact.

Every small contributions help a lot!