Rebuilding the Airfield School
Setting: Volta Region, near Ho along the busy Lome Road. 6 acres of flat land.
Scope of Project:: 8 classrooms plus office and meeting room, Sanitation facility with squatting toilets flushed with harvested rain water
Current Status: The building is under construction. We are seiously short of funding!
Benny Rubinstein and Shifra Raz have been on site since November 2009 and will remain through March 2010 to oversee the building of the school and work on improvements in education. Without their dedicated efforts this school might never have been built.
Trees: Shade trees were planted in 2007
Estimated Cost of Project: $50,000.
Raised to Date: $ 37,000.
About the School:
The Air Field School was established in 1990 as a community school and is under the care of the Ministry of Education. It serves about 5 surrounding villages namely Agbokorpe, Mefikorpe, Xedzrokorpe, Klomakorpe, Duncankorpe and Andokorpe.“Korpe” in Ewe means village and each of these villages were named after the first person to settle there as has been the case of most villages in Ghana.
Students walk between 2 to 5 km to come to school. Parents are mostly peasant farmers.
Classes include Nursery to Primary 5. Children who want to further their education have to travel to the nearby schools in Ho township which is about 8-10 km away due to lack of higher level classes.
All the teachers reside in Ho and have to take commercial cars to and from school as there are no suitable accomodations nearby.
The children will be happy to have a well built school just as their friends in the cities. They want to be in school to learn rather than to be working on the farm as they see their parents suffering but gaining nothing meaningful in the end.
As our former Director reported ... the children at the Airfield are able to tell the difference between the rich and the poor. They are aware that what they are provided both at home and at school is certainly not the best that they could be offered. They know they have the strength to be what they desire to be in life. What is lacking now is the creation of an enabling environment and the first step towards that is the good decision of Pagus and all her partners to provide a standard school block for the school.
School population: 150 pupils from five
surrounding villages.
Parent involvement: Active PTA – able to
supply unskilled labor. Parents are mostly farmers or petty traders.
Government Commitment: The government has donated 10 bags of cement. We have requested that they furnish the school and get experienced and dedicated teachers on staff.
Funding for this project is made largely possible by students and teachers from the Boston, NY and Philadelphia areas. Many thanks to Shelby Kay Fantozzi, then a high school Junior, who made this video and works tirelessly for the children of Ghana.
Shelby writes about her impression upon meeting the children at the school...
All around me were beautiful, smiling faces. I asked, “What should we talk about next?” They all wanted to know about my braces, then my nail polish, then the beads I wore. Then, who was my father, and who was my mother? Where did I live? Where did I go to school? I gladly told them everything I could think of about my family, my school, and my town. They nodded in a way that made me unsure if they understood. I chose to believe they did, and smiled and laughed with them as we joked and talked. I’ve never heard a laugh clearer or more joyful. All of the things we said and did amused each other and faces all around stretched into wide smiles.
Community by Community, Child by Child – You Can Make a Difference.
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