Periclean Scholars – Ghana Program, Class Résumé

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

Alumna’s Campus Visit Prompts Mini Reunion

A visit to NC from GA by one of our members, Alison Brooks (’10), prompted a mini reunion for our Ghana class. On February 17, 2014 seven of us enjoyed dinner at Dan Thai restaurant on South Church Street in Burlington. Dan Thai was selected because for years our class held profit-sharing events there, often on Reading Day at the semester’s end. In addition to catching up and Founding Members from the 2010 graduating class current on campus members, the group discussed ongoing projects in Ghana (a Health Center complex in Kpoeta and a kindergarten in Sokode) and in the USA (scholarships for US college students with high need).

Alison is completing a Master’s in Public Health at Emory University for which she is conducting research on trachoma (an eye disease) in Tanzania using GIS computer mapping programs. While at Elon, in addition to being a Ghana Periclean Scholar, Alison was a Watson Scholar, studied in Ghana for a semester and spent a summer on an NIH Fellowship studying water quality issues in Tanzania. In addition to speaking with Ghana class adviser Dr. Frontani’s Africa seminar (GST 404) students about her research and the importance of not having a ‘single story’ when it comes to Africa, Alison gave a presentation on leadership to approximately a dozen Global Experience (GST 110) faculty.

The Ghana class hopes to host another mini reunion meal with current and alumni members in the coming months, before several class members graduate in May.

Dan Thai group (Cara taking photo) Bryce & Jordan T Kaitlin, Sara, Cara, Alison

The Kpoeta Health Center: A Truly Sustainable Project

A few weeks ago our class learned that the Government of Ghana will post a midwife to the Health Center the Ghana Pericleans built in partnership with the people of Kpoeta, Ghana between April 2007 and January 2009. The midwife’s addition, in December 2013, will bring the Health Center’s full-time government-paid staff to four (two nurses, one staff member, and a midwife).

Health Center on Opening Day, Jan. 9, 2009
Health Center on Opening Day, Jan. 9, 2009
Ghana Pericleans and Nurses at Health Center
Ghana Pericleans and Nurses at Health Center, Jan. 2010

At the time of our 29 Founding Ghana Periclean Member’s graduation in May 2010, a basic Health Center was in place which the class had funded and the community and hired specialists (electricians, roofers, and plumbers) had built. By September 2011, Ghana’s Ministry of Health officially brought the facility into its network of Health Centers, which led to several benefits including: regular deliveries of basic medical supplies to the Health Center’s small dispensary and the ability of patients to use their National Health Insurance cards at the Health Center.

Ceremony for the Health Center's Entry into the National System, Sept. 2011
Ceremony for the Health Center’s Entry into the National System, Sept. 2011

Today, the Health Center Complex serves as the primary care facility for basic care for more than 10,000 people living in several small remote hamlets and villages in the vicinity of Kpoeta, which is located near the Ghana-Togo border. Thanks to the ongoing support of our Founding Members, 14 younger Ghana Periclean Scholars from the classes of 2012-16, and other supporters in the USA and Ghana, the Health Center serves an average of 125 people each week and forms one end of an L-shaped Health Center Complex of three buildings that were all built via a Ghana Periclean—Community of Kpoeta partnership. The other two buildings include a nurses’ housing block with two 2-bedroom apartments completed in late 2011 and a second housing block with two 1-bedroom apartments that is nearing completion.

First Nurses Houses Block, Jan. 2012
First Nurses Houses Block, Jan. 2012
Newest Housing Block Nearing Completion, Oct. 2013
Newest Housing Block Nearing Completion, Oct. 2013