A professor at Regis University recently told me, “I love your vision. As you’ll soon learn in development work, about 5% of the overall effort is the vision and 95% is the delivery and refinement of that vision. No exaggeration here!” I had a feeling that he was right, but could do nothing to refine the vision than to brace myself for landing at Kotoka International Airport and see what I found in Ghana.
Our vision for a literacy center has been met with much praise and excitement. Several trusted friends here have said, “Yes, it’s needed.” We even have people lining up their own villages for us to come in and see if we can help. I’m rarely satisfied with partial information, so we continued meeting with people and asking questions about the current education system in Ghana. Combining that with chance meetings (it seriously seems like divine appointments out here start with, “What are you doing in Ghana?”), we began to see the situation opening up in front of us.
Even though we were very clear about our vision and mission, I continued pressing people for their needs to see whether there’s really a fit. It’s easy enough for a Ghanaian community to look us and say, “Yes, we need your help!” We have to push and probe to find out the real situation. In some cases, there’s very little help we can offer while remaining true to our vision. But after many conversations, we have found genuine needs that line up with our vision.
There are literacy programs in Ghana. There are teachers at schools willing to teach the students who flood in to learn. There are elective English and local language classes that high school students take for three straight years. What they lack, in many cases, is reading material.
Senior high school is a big deal here in Ghana. It is not funded by the government, so students have to pay tuition to attend. On top of that, there isn’t a high school in every village, so many of these students end up boarding at the school during the terms. This means that students might be going to high school in an entirely different region from their family at the age of 15. The cost of this education and boarding can amount to 6,000 cedis, which is just under $2,000 for three years, which is a huge chunk of change out here. After all of that, many schools still can’t provide literature for them to study. And the parents likely won’t pay after emptying their pockets for the kid to be there. What ends up happening at these schools, like Adaklu Senior High Technical School, is that English and local language teachers teach from novels that the students will never read. Literacy education without reading.
So Kaitlyn and I sat down and laid it out. 1) There are teachers of English and the local Ghanaian languages wanting to teach. 2) These courses have solid reading lists. The elective English classes are at least half African literature, and much of it is Ghanaian. 3) Students are already in classrooms wanting to learn.
In a sense, half of our mission is already completed.
What is lacking is that second initiative: a substantial library of primarily African literature. The kids don’t have the books to read in classes about reading books. If we can improve these programs that already exist by supplying the right books in sufficient numbers for students to study, we could impact generations of literature students all over the country.
I still believe that the literacy center will happen someday and probably all over the world. But in this place, in this time, we have to recognize the infrastructure that already exists in order to create the greatest global impact. After all, working together in community was always one of our big notions. I think I know what that professor was talking about. To refine your vision, you must find the need that is present and aligns with the heart of your organization. We cannot come into Ghana declaring what they need the most. By careful questioning and observation, we can determine where dollars, effort, and care will make the biggest difference.
