"My name is in America"

There is a bit of a back story to this photograph, taken four months ago at Anani Memorial International School.

I met Mr. Abdullah four years ago.  He has taught French at the school for close to forty years.  He is one of the most dedicated and energetic educators I have ever met.

Anani School is a small private school that serves the children of many struggling families in the slum of Nima.  The parents often make about $2.00 a day, and many of the pupils are orphans who are being raised by grandparents or others.  Parents make big sacrifices to send their children to this school, as the available public schools are overwhelmed.  But they are not always able to pay the fees, so the school often struggles and the teachers, such as Mr. Adbullah, often suffer.

We believe strongly that Yo Ghana! should always help in a way that encourages local initiative, so our board decided that the best way to assist the school was to ask parents and other community members to donate goods (such as onions) or services (such as music lessons) to the school, and we would match their contributions with cash.

The project was very successful.  It not only raised goods and services and money for the school, it also increased parents' pride in and commitment to it, and they loved the certificates.  Madam Samira says that she hung hers in her room "so that I can see it every morning and tell myself to contribute more because my name is in America."

I tell  you this story because I think it illustrates how careful we are with the money that you donate to us, and how hard our partners in Ghana work to do their part, often against great odds, in giving their children and their students a chance at a better life.

We are trying to raise $5,000 in December, about 25% of our budget for the coming year.  So far we have raised $1,100, so we need your help.

To contribute, just to to http://www.yoghana.org/donate.html -- or e-mail yoghana.org@gmail.com and ask for my mailing address.  As we are a 501(c)3, deductions are tax deductible.

The Secret About Mormons

I recently ran across an article on how Utah is attacking homelessness in Mother Jones, the radical
magazine, that reminded that educated people like me are often blind to all the good things that conservative churches and people are doing.

Mention the word "Mormon" or "Utah" around most well-educated liberals, and you'll soon be hearing about their sexism, racism, intolerance toward gays, and all manner of other cruelties.

If you happen to be one of those rare liberals who actually has some Mormon friends, you might notice that they tend to be very family oriented and generous.

Now Mother Jones tells us that one of the reasons that Utah has done such a fine job of reducing homelessness is that they have drawn on the Mormon principle of charity.  Rather than insisting that someone first get sober, drug free, and otherwise get their lives in order before getting shelter, it turns out that once homeless people have a home, they have a much easier time fixing the rest of their problems, so much so that it is costs less to give homeless people a home than it does to deal with all of their problems while they are living on the street.

In this world in which radicals, liberals, and conservatives are so often insulting rather than listening to each other, I find it pretty cool that Mother Jones is pointing out some excellent and humane work coming out of Utah and the Church of Latter Day Saints.

So I invite you to seek out some good news about a group whose politics or theology makes you uncomfortable.

Surviving My Teen Years in the 1970s

The image to the right is from "Dazed and Confused," a widely beloved film of high school in the mid-1970s.  Having been in high school in the mid-1970s, I find the film all-too realistic and therefore not all that funny.  I think the problem is that the film implies that being stupid and rebellious was some sort of achievement and without repercussions.  The film doesn't present the lives of people like my classmate who tried every way he could think of to be cool without success until he finally settled on his route to fame: taking more drugs than anyone else.  The end of that gambit was not funny.

I found high school both boring and frightening.  I was completely clueless about how to connect to young women, especially the ones I found attractive, but also put off by the continual stream of sexual harassment that the school tolerated.  Taking a strong interest in academics never seemed like a viable option for some reason.  I don't know if that was because that's the stage I was in or because so few adults or certainly students seemed all that interested in it.  I wasn't into drinking (partying), so that seemed to be a barrier.  Distance running ended up being my "thing," and gave me a small set of friends and certainly a strong sense of purpose.

It's interesting, though, now that I'm spending more time with the people I went to school with to find out how much I enjoy them, and it makes me wonder why I couldn't have been less rigid and frightened and judgmental as a teen and made more friends and gotten a better sense of what the world was like.  It felt like years to survive, not explore.

Inspiring Book: Find Me Unafraid

I recently read a particularly inspiring book: Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss, and Hoe in an African Slum. by Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner.

The authors met in Kibera, the extensive slum in Nairobi, Kenya.  Kennedy and was a home-grown community organizer who had overcome poverty and a tumultuous home life to become a powerful community member.  How poor was the group who got the community group started?  Well, they had just one pen to write notes.

Jessica was an idealistic and strong-willed university student from the U.S. spending a semester in Nairobi who told Kennedy that she was going to take the highly unusual step, for a westerner, of living in Kibera.  Find Me Unafraid explains how they worked together, became married, and, with the help of many other, have built a school for girls and many other institutions and services.

Two things I like about this book: First) The authors present themselves as partners.  Jessica has a lot more formal education and wealth than Kennedy does, but Kennedy is rich in life and leadership experience.  Second) The organization at the heart of the story was started by a group of slum residents who had just a pen--and a lot of determination.  They didn't wait for a Western NGO.