Meet Some (Incredibly Inspiring) Ashesi Students

Part of what I'm up to in Ghana is spending a week working on a book chapter that entails interviewing Ashesi University students.  My piece is on how the remarkable little university reflects African as well as Western motifs, and one of those motifs is a passion to care for others.

Kpetermeni Siakor--pictured here in a photo taken yesterday -has worked for and is now a board member for ilabLiberia, an organization working to speed communication regarding disasters, such as the ebola crisis in Liberia.  He's also set up a platform for enabling students with little access to books to connect with the best educational sites on the internet.  And more stuff I don't have room to cover.

Sam Norman Sali and Charles W. Jackson are Dalai Lama Fellows who head up Sesa Mu, an organization devoted to helping local pineapple growers figure out how to make a sustainable living.  They hope to play a role in Ghana some day being able to feed itself rather than importing so much food, a fact that drives much of the poverty that affects rural Ghana.

Benedicta Amo Bempah founded the AmoBempah Initiative last summer after taking a bus to Tamale to find out for herself what conditions were like in the North and finding a village that seemed to need some help.  They started with a literacy program and have plans for improving people's access to health, drinking water, and improved education, as well.

Chris Haruna co-founded Upper Progress to help schools in Ghana's remote Upper Eastern Region, a place where educational resources are particularly scarce.  For three years he has has persuaded a dozen or more Ashesi students to spent sixteen hours (one way) on a crowded bus and a week volunteering.

What these brief descriptions can't capture is the great joy all of these people express in having the opportunity to serve, to make the world better through working with and for others.