Thank you all for making this project possible. Thank you for your support, prayers and donations. Here is a project video trailer documenting the FIRE Project Ghana trip in 54 seconds.

Ghana is a west African country, bounded on the north by Burkina Faso, on the east by Togo, on the south by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the west by Côte d’Ivoire. Formerly a British colony known as the Gold Coast, was led to independence by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah on the 6th of March, 1957. Ghana became the first black nation in sub-Saharan Africa to achieve independence from colonial rule. The country is named after the ancient empire of Ghana, from which the ancestors of the inhabitants of the present country are thought to have migrated.

Education in Ghana was mainly informal before the arrival of European settlers, who built a formal education system addressed to the elites. With the independence of Ghana in 1957, universal education became an important political objective.  In 2011, the primary school net enrolment rate was 84%, described by UNICEF as “far ahead” of the Sub-Saharan average. In its 2013-14 report, the World Economic Forum ranked Ghana 46th out of 148 countries for education system quality. In 2010, Ghana’s literacy rate was 71.5%, with a notable gap between men (78.3%) and women (65.3%).

Even though the above statistics may seem attractive, it does not address the needs of the children and their families. According to educators and government officials, poverty is the major reason Ghanaian students miss school a lot. Despite the country’s strong enrollment rate, Ghana’s levels of poverty are very high, with 30 percent living on less than $1 a day and 54 percent living on less than $2 a day according to WorldVision.org. That means many students across Ghana live in grinding poverty and must help their families by working in the markets, on farms or on fishing boats instead of going to school. Their parents do not have enough money to buy text books, exercise books or writing utensils. The purpose of our trip is to go make a difference in the lives of these children and empower them to study/learn by providing school supplies, offering reading clinics and populating a library at the school.

The New Life FIRE project team is traveling to a small rural village Lolito, in the Volta Region of Ghana where most of the kids have to walk miles to go to school. They also lack writing utensils, exercise books and a library, which makes learning hard for these dedicated future generations.

Our goal for FIRE Project Ghana is to provide every single child (roughly 100-130 pupils) in school a set of school supplies (including pencils, pens, coloring pencils, ruler, exercise books, etc.). In addition to school supplies, we will be organizing reading clinics, establishing the first school library and working with a local clinics as well.

This is a great opportunity not only for the youth involved but for all of Iowa City, Coralville, North Liberty and beyond. Your help in providing for the children in Ghana will make a lasting impact.

Please help us make a difference by donating to the Project Ghana Team. Any amount helps makes an impact.