OVERVIEW OF OUR CLASS
Since our founding in April 2007, our members, together with our US-based partners, have raised over $120,000 in cash and supplies to support health and education projects in Ghana (85%) and the USA (15%). Our members include: 29 students from Elon University’s class of 2010, 12 students from the classes of 2012-2016, and one faculty adviser.
Our Ghana-based partners have contributed $25,000 in salary support and $3,000 in materials for our major project, a community health center in Kpoeta, Ghana. Our other major project is a kindergarten in Sokode, Ghana. In the USA we have hosted speakers and an African Festival on the Elon campus, shared our research through publications and presentations, and granted small scholarships to college students with high financial need. Our key accomplishments are described below.
KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN GHANA
Kpoeta Health Center (initiated in April 2007)
• Our class responded to a request to assist the people of Kpoeta, Ghana who desired to have a health facility in their own village. People from Kpoeta were dying needlessly each year when the dirt road to their nearest health facility in Kpedze became impassible for many months during the rainy season
• By January 2009, our partnership had enabled the construction of a 10-room health center
• The facility provides year-round healthcare to 10,000 Ghanaians in the Kpoeta area
• From 2010-2014 we enlarged the complex to include a dispensary in the original building and constructed two housing blocks (two 2-bedroom apartments and two 1-bedroom apartments) to make work at the remote location more appealing for the Government of Ghana paid staff
• Due to community members’ drafting of blueprints for no charge, donations of iron roofing sheets for one structure, molding of bricks and construction of walls, all three buildings for the health center complex, including plumbing, electricity, and full kitchens and baths in each apartment, were completed with $70,000 raised by the Ghana Periclean class
• We received medical supplies from private donors and Duke University’s warehouse for the health center
• In 2011, the center was officially incorporated into the Government of Ghana’s healthcare network. This has enabled the center to receive regular shipments of medical supplies from Ghana’s Ministry of Health, patients to use their government issued Insurance Cards, and for the center to continue to receive additional staff
• Due to the many improvements in Kpoeta at the health center, the Government of Ghana leveled, widened, and paved the road between Kpoeta and Kpedze beginning in 2011. The high quality road allows people in Kpoeta to reach Kpedze easily on weekends, when the Kpoeta Health Center is closed
Sokode Kindergarten (initiated January 2009)
• Our class responded to a community request for a large multi-room kindergarten with amenities to supplement the current basic one-room building in Sokode, Ghana. Construction of the structure is underway.
• The facility, which has received $12,600 raised by the Ghana Periclean class to date, will serve 100s of students when it is completed
Heifer International’s Livestock & Beekeeping Project #21-1037-01 (Jan 2008 to Jan 2010)
• The community of Sokode together with an Elon professor put in a successful application to Heifer International to support local livelihoods in three villages, including Sokode and Kpedze
• Our class, with tremendous support from area and out-of-state churches raised $14,500 of the $247,869 needed to provide 113 families in the three villages with honey bees and grasscutters (small edible animals), units to house them, training on how to breed them, and
Library Books for Abor Elementary & Sokode Schools (initiated September 2007)
• In response to a request from a former Peace Corps volunteer, our class engaged in a book drive that added 500 Afro-centric books for children to the Abor Elementary School library
• We also engaged in a school supply and book drive for Sokode schools that led to over 1,300 books being added to Sokode libraries
• We were greatly helped by a partnership with the US Navy which enabled all of the books to be transported and imported into Ghana for free, once we were able to get the books to Norfolk, VA with the assistance of Elon’s winter term Ghana abroad program and Elon’s physical plant
KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN THE USA
College Scholarships (initiated April 2013)
• In partnership with the NGO ScholarCHIPs we have given $500 in scholarships to high need college students in the eastern US
Elon Footprints of Africa Festival (held Nov 27 to Dec 1, 2007)
• We wrote a grant and received a $5,200 campus award as well as some additional support from academic departments to host speakers, musical groups, a fashion show and more to raise awareness of the culture, history, and medical issues facing Ghana and Africa
Presentations, Publications, and Lifelong Learning (since 2007)
• Our members’ research on Ghana and development in Africa has appeared in several peer-reviewed publications including: Africa Media Review, African Studies Quarterly, Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought, and Progress in Development Studies
• Our members have written for and been featured in the popular press in newspapers and magazines including New York Times, News & Record (NC), The Mercury (PA), Voyages & Richmond Free Press Magazines (VA)
• Our members’ work has appeared in campus publications including: The Pendulum, Visions Magazine, Colonnades, the Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, and the Black Oaks Newsletter
• Our members have given more than 35 talks on Ghana or Africa on campus, in schools, churches, and at regional and national conferences and have several created public service announcement videos
• We have demonstrated the use of alternative energy devices (solar cookers) and repeated the demonstrations in Ghana (where we left several of the devices)
For more information visit our webpages:
http://org.elon.edu/pericleanscholars2010
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