The Akrofoso community is a farming community with a total population of about 1500 inhabitants. The town is located within the Sekyere Afram Plains District of the Asante Region of Ghana. The community is blessed with two schools with a total population of about 600 kids. According to the 2011 Basic Education Certificate Examination results, the Junior High school in Akrofoso had pass rate of 10% which means 3 pupils out of a total of 30 passed the exam and could proceed to the Senior High School based on their academic performance. This became a worry to the community leaders, Teachers, as well as parents. They therefore found the lack of educational resources and learning materials to be a major problem.
The Community approached the Yonso Project to assist with a library project. The organization did not have the needed support and therefore applied to the Chen Yet Sen Family Foundation to support the project. Upon the approval of the project, there were jubilation by all community members and they therefore mobilized themselves to support the project in anyway they can. The Grant provided for both locally and foreign published books as well as educational games, furniture and computers to help improve the educational system in the community. The community continue to sing the praises of both The Yonso Project and the Chen Yet Sen Family Foundation as they foresee a great improvement in the educational systems. The community provided a place to house the books and also helped secure someone to manage the library through the National Youth Employment Programme. The parents also agreed to contribute towards electricity bills and other minor repairs that may come up. Thus, the community is bent on ensuring that the facility is sustained to support their wards education.
The project was finally completed on the 30th of November, 2011 and this brought a lot of joy to the community and the Yonso Project especially the Teachers and the school children. The children were happy because some of them had seen computers or their first time and were also going to experience the library environment for their first time as well. The children and teachers are now enjoying every aspect of the library which include the story books, educational games like the scrabbles, computers as well as text books for various subjects of which most of them couldn’t have had access to had it not been this library. This is because most of the parents are not able to afford these kind of books for their kids and they therefore see this facility as a blessing for the library.
As one child puts it, “Now, we will not be borded about books again. We are
coinfident we will be able to speak good English and also know how to use
computers.”
The Akrofoso Community and the Yonso Project wish to say a big THANK YOU to the Chen Yet Sen Family Foundation for your wonderful support to make our dreams for these rural kids a reality. There is however a lot to be done as Akrofoso is just one community out of hundreds that are crying for the support.
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