Written by Akaa Project team leader and long-term volunteer, Erika Kay
Back to school. I remember when the commercials would begin. I’d be sitting in our basement in the summer, the coolest part of the house, watching reruns of Gilmore Girls on ABC Family, and one day, as if a switch had been flipped out of nowhere in August, I’d be bombarded with commercials of dancing kids and happy school buses all convincing me how happy I’d be at school this year just because I’d bought all of my back-to-school-clothing at Khols, or because I’d bought my new oversized backpack from Target, or because Staples now carried Gel Pens in every single color. I remember one year there was a commercial that featured kids breakdancing all over school, in the hallway, on top of lunch tables, in the classroom; that one nearly got me to buy Sketchers, but I didn’t give in, thank god, because Sketchers have never been cool.
I would sit there, we all would sit there, and watch and absorb everything we were told was necessary for a successful semester back at school. Education was trivialized, accepted as part of daily life; we weren’t going to school to learn, we were going to school to put our box of 64 crayons to good use. By December all of our puppy folders would be faded, our mechanical pencils out of lead (especially if you bought .5 lead instead of the required .7 lead, like I did), our White Out pens dried up, and our lunchboxes smelly and replaced by brown paper bags. Every year we’d see the cool kids breakdancing and we’d all march to Staples and Target in lines, one after another, like zombies migrating toward human life or flies following the bright light, and purchase our year’s worth of cool. This is what it took to make us excited about school. This is what it took to bribe us back into that daily grind. We were excited to see friends, yes, but we were more excited to show off our new kicks and Rocket Power folders. We had to be enticed; back to school meant shopping—it didn’t mean bettering yourself to gain more opportunity in life—it meant buying a trapper keeper for the first time (and then hating it because it didn’t actually make you more organized). Back to school simply meant things, more things.
Now stop, erase everything you know about school. Step out of our paradigm where learning is a right granted by government. Release our notion of education as a norm and get past the idea that a high school diploma means nothing in our day and age. There was a time in our country when the accessibility of education was so far from reality it wasn’t even a dream yet. In this country, the United States, we are comforted in knowing that was the past. We are so comforted that we forget that it remains a very real present all over the world.
Imagine you live in a community where education for your child has only been a reality for five years. Imagine you live in the Akaa community. What if you, an eleven year old, were the first person in your family to attend school regularly for five years straight? What would get you excited about the back to school season? What things would you wish for? A roof, a tin roof over your classroom; a new latrine so you can go to the bathroom during the school day; floors, real cement floors under your feet; field trips, your first field trip in your four years of schooling; pencils, real pencils that sharpen and have an eraser, and paper on which to actually use the pencil— these are the things you would wish for if you were that child! These are the things that get you excited to go back to school.
This back to school season, The Akaa Project and its community of volunteers are beyond proud to be starting its fifth year of providing that excitement for village children who have only recently come to know the reality of accessible education. We have thrived with the enthusiasm of the local Akaa community, who are even more excited than us to kick of the school year. We’ve grown every year and anticipate enrolling about 100 students for the 2013-2014 school year! With that said, even with all of the local support and hard work leading up to this school year, the school still relies on The Akaa Project network to maintain open doors and provide education without cost to the families of the students. The dedication of our students and their community to its new found educational opportunity has shown through their remarkable test scores, surpassing the standards of the local government schools, and we only seek to improve further. In order to do so, we absolutely need your help.
We are constantly in need of school supplies, and I don’t mean crayons and colored pencils; I’m talking about the simplest form of pencils and paper, notebooks, loose leaf, erasers, and chalk. We would like to build a latrine for the school so the students have a regular, sanitary place to go; this requires building materials and cement, also needed to finish the school walls. And while we are grateful for all the donations of books and textbooks from American donors, we hope to provide a full set of Ghanaian textbooks that fit our curriculum. These are the things that get our students excited to go back to school.
When I think of my own experience with my schooling, I remember both the dread of returning to a place where I was forced to sit still and talk only in ‘inside voices,’ and also the excitement over getting shiny new safety scissors and a pencil box. When I think of the Asiafo Amanfro Community School, I see students excited to learn, excited to prove themselves on exams, because they know the value of their education. I see a community who, when told they didn’t have to wear school uniforms to attend our school, chose to enforce school uniforms on their own because they are so proud of what their community has created, and they want everyone to know what school their child attends.
So, this school year, now that you’ve made the annual march to Staples and Office Max to purchase your Wonder Woman folders and Five Star notebooks, take a moment to think about a world that seems like a distant past to us, but remains a reality in communities like Akaa. We’ve met the students, we know their smiling faces, and we want to make this fifth school year as memorable as the first. We’ve improved every year and hope to make that part of the tradition, and to one day make the time when education wasn’t available a part of their distant past. returning to a place where I was forced to sit still and talk only in ‘inside voices,’ and also the excitement over getting shiny new safety scissors and a pencil box. When I think of the Asiafo Amanfro Community School, I see students excited to learn, excited to prove themselves on exams, because they know the value of their education. I see a community who, when told they didn’t have to wear school uniforms to attend our school, chose to enforce school uniforms on their own because they are so proud of what their community has created, and they want everyone to know what school their child attends.
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