In my last post I mentioned GGYN’s mission statement: "The Global-Ghana Youth Network is a local-global organization working to educate, empower, and inspire youth in the U.S. and West Africa."
Someone asked me why the mission statement included “youth in the U.S.” and that made me realize that my blog hasn’t gone that into the details of exactly what GGYN is and how it’s run. There’s some information on the school’s website and in the short film “Under the Mango Tree,” but both are a bit old and the website is actually being remodeled right now.
To be honest, I feel like I keep learning new things about the school’s history and workings every day, so I’m sure from now on I’ll be updating you with stories about GGYN’s past along with the stories of me being here. To begin, here’s a brief history of how the school got to where it is today:
Back in 2003, Mollishmael was part of a drum and dance group that began helping international students at the University practice for their drum and dance classes (rhythm-less white people represent!). As they practiced, kids would come by not just to watch the group, but also to dance along outside the yard where the group was practicing. According to Mollishmael a lot of those kids were even better then those in the group, which I definitely believe after seeing some of today’s students dance. Mollishmael and Ian, a student from Maine, decided to organize a group just for these 15 or 20 kids, and that’s how the Maine-Ghana Youth Network (GGYN’s old name) was formed.
Over the next month, Mollishmael and Ian began to help these kids with schoolwork as well, and they quickly realized that most of the kids didn’t even go to school. They recruited some other American students from the University to help with the tutoring, but of course those students had to go home at the end of the semester.
When Ian and the others left, Mollishmael continued to run MGYN on his own – dancing, academics and all – for a year and a half. Mollishmael was nineteen-years-old when the organization began, and during the first few years of MGYN he was still catching up in school himself: he had needed to take years off in his early teens to work for his own tuition money.
Mollishmael knew that a lot of the kids in the group came without eating every day, so he started buying them gari, or ground cassava. Gari is a food that you usually cook with other things like beans or stew, and although it is filling, it is tasteless and basically nutrient-less. It’s so cheap that there’s a local idiom that if someone is not doing well financially, you say that they’re “eating gari.”
Ian returned to Ghana after that year and a half and came to visit MGYN. When he saw that Mollishmael was running everything himself, Ian began to recruit other volunteers from study abroad programs at the University and then from Maine when he got home.
Ian got in touch with one girl, Erin, who came over to Ghana in 2005 with funding from her church. She stayed for about a year, and during that time her church sent money to help the organization pay for better food for the kids, books, and other resources that they needed. MGYN had started teaching the kids what they called “entrepreneurship” (basket weaving, etc.) by the time Erin had gotten there, and with her money they were able to hire professionals to come and teach the kids. Beyond the finances, she also helped MGYN immensely with its administrative organization.
When Erin returned to Maine in 2006, she helped set up what has really enabled this organization to "educate, empower and inspire" American kids – an American fundraising tour for Mollishmael. He headed to the States in late 2007 and began speaking at grade schools and high schools around the country about MGYN, education and life in general in Africa, and also about making a difference in others' lives even in the U.S.
Mollishmael says that kids in the U.S. don’t seem to know much about Africa beyond the stereotypical (for instance, they ask about problems that the school has with lions), but that they’re genuinely interested in learning about life on another continent. Schools all over the U.S. have raised money and collected supplies for GGYN, and Mollishmael has also raised money by teaching African drum and dances lessons at these schools.
When Mollishmael isn't in the U.S., the kids at GGYN have still stayed connected to some American schools through class pen-pals and skype. However, sending letters can get pricey given the school's tight budget and the internet isn't very reliable, so those sorts of connections can't happen very often.
The film “Under the Mango Tree” was created in 2008 (Erin was interviewed in the U.S.), and shortly after that Mollishmael changed the organization’s name to Global-Ghana Youth Network. By that time the organization had grown substantially: about fifty kids who weren’t in school would come for breakfast and lunch, and after the schools let out there were up to 200 kids coming daily.
So that’s a very general overview of an organization that’s obviously undergone a lot of changes over the years. There are currently three Americans that Mollishmael met in the U.S. who serve as the board by organizing a lot of the American side of GGYN, meaning that they help set up an itinerary for the fundraising tours, find donors and volunteers, and plan the budget for donations. Mollishmael will be coming to the States to fundraise again this upcoming January through most of spring. He’s still in the beginning stages of planning where he’ll speak, so if anyone knows any venues that you think would work (schools, churches, colleges – really wherever), a contact would be really appreciated! American fundraising has had a powerful impact on GGYN's success, and based on what I've been told from those who heard Mollishmael speak, hearing the story of this school from the founder himself can have a powerful impact on an individual as well.
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