Tucked away in the green mountains that compose the Togo-Ghana border, Likpe Bakua is like many Ghanaian villages: very communal, welcoming, and soccer crazed. However, like many small Ghanaian villages, one of the most serious problems they face is lack of access to decent education. Public schools are grossly inadequate and the one private school is too expensive for most families to afford. And even at that school, the education has been only marginally better than what was offered in the public schools. The problem has grown so bad that not a single child who took the final junior high school exams last year passed. The community is frustrated and worried for the future of their children.

Fellow volunteer, Nathan Lee, and I signed up to help this fall at the small private school owned by Francis Ablordepe’s. Our hope was that we could work with the children to help them improve in math and English. We were also charged with doing what we could to help this dying school get back on its feet. We were to increase enrollment by reducing the tuition by half of what had

previously been charged, and to work with teachers and staff to better organize and teach the students in all subjects. In this we faced significant challenges on many levels – educationally, culturally and financially.

Going into the first term, we were unaware of how bad things actually were. On the first day of school only 14 children showed up, there were only 2 teachers and a headmaster, and no semblance of a schedule or structure of any kind. We learned that Francis only visited the school occasionally, and he seemed to be happy to put us in charge. Hmm…

We considered diving straight in and trying to ‘fix’ everything, but we knew that would not be a good way to create meaningful change. We needed to consider that there might not always be volunteers present to run or even teach at the school. We didn’t want to create dependency on Pagus if it could be avoided. We wanted to create cohesive systems that would equip teachers and staff for the future. We started with a frank discussion with the administration; there were organizational issues, staffing issues, the need to improve teaching quality and attendance.

Next we worked with the teachers and we set up a schedule that would allow them to teach those subjects they were most capable of teaching. We hired four new teachers to fill the gaps. Then all we needed to do was fill the classes!

This proved to be much easier than we thought. Within a few weeks word had spread throughout the area that the school was undergoing changes and tuition was affordable. This year, Pagus agreed to subsidize the tuitions (under agreed upon conditions) so the school would be able to function as it should. Parents would pay half the regular fee, but it had to be paid on time so teachers wouldn’t have to spend valuable time trying to collect money, as they do in most all private schools.

We held community meetings. Attendance skyrocketed and the fees were paid on schedule. By the end of my stay we had over 110 students enrolled.

Finally the school began to take shape and at the very least become a functioning educational institution. But a lot of work was still ahead of us. Problems arose daily and the teachers would often not know how to handle them. We set up weekly meetings to share ideas and discuss possible solutions.

One frequently discussed topic was discipline. Like most schools in Ghana the cane was used for almost any offense, large or small. However, even the teachers saw that this technique was simply not working. Though Pagus is strong in its no-caning stance, we realized that helping teachers adapt alternative methods would take time. After much discussion we agreed that poorly behaved students would be sent to the headmaster’s office. There the headmaster would decide whether to cane the student or administer alternatives that we suggested. Understandably the teachers were still struggling to maintain this system, but they were improving when I left.

After 3 months, countless hours of meetings, and several stressful moments, the school was finally showing signs of improvement. Francis found that he could run the school at the lower tuition rate as long as he kept enrollment high. He decided to try going it alone next term. Nathan will continue to check on things weekly and focus the rest of his time at our other schools; Airfield and Bishop Forson. Now we will wait to see what kind of impact our work has had, but there was no question about it, things have definitely improved since September.

Myles Dworkin volunteered in Ghana from September through November 2010. He spent the bulk of his time at the Bakua School and the rest of his time helping our sponsored children at Bishop Forson School.