Yo Ghana Near the End of 2013

We have a lot of good news at the end of 2013!  The I.R.S. just approved our application to be a 501(c)(3) public charity.  A set of very dedicated teachers in Ghana and the Pacific Northwest cheerfully and smoothly manage our letter exchanges.  Our brand new board features people raised in diverse places (Ghana, England, Haiti, the U.S., and Canada) and possessed of varied skills (community development, project evaluation, law, accounting, education, Black Studies, economics, computing, engineering).  And we have provided scholarship assistance to students (such as those shown below) whose families cannot afford to send them to school, funds to finish a school’s first library, and electronic equipment such as computers and printers.

            Most of all, we bring Ghanaians and Americans together.  That’s what the students from Morle Junior High School are so excited about in the photograph to the right.  It’s not an athletic contest they are celebrating; they just learned that Yo Ghana! paired them with a school in Springfield, Oregon!

Those schools became our seventh set of partners, and several more are on the way.  Students write about who or what inspires them, family members they miss, their favorite foods, and what goes on outside their classroom door.   They also encourage each other.  As one Ghanaian recently wrote her new American friend: “All that I have to say is that life is not easy at all, but with hard work and dedication things shall be well in the future.”

Please consider a financial gift at the end of the year to help our own “hard work and dedication.”  We are run completely by volunteers both in the U.S. and Ghana, and your donation is tax deductible.  Our website has a Paypal button:            http://www.yoghana.org/   Or contact David del Mar (delmard@pdx.edu)