Education Center for Ghanaian Youth

Hello everyone!
Thank you again for your donation towards the Education Center in Atonsu Agogo, Ghana. We are currently knee deep in construction (see photos below) and couldn't be more excited that the Center is coming to life brick by brick. The community has dreamed about a Center like this for a long time and we are thrilled that everything has worked in our favor thus far! We hope to complete construction before the end of the year and open the Center coinciding with a school term. 

We are still in need of a large chunk of money in order to finish construction and buy computer, books, and supplies. Please help us spread the word!

Links:

• Ed Center Updates!

Hello everyone!
My name is Rebecca Kuntz and I am the Education Center Project Co-Manager. I just spent 4 weeks in Ghana planning, budgeting, and breaking ground on the Education Center with Light for Children!  First off, everyone at Light for Children wanted to say a huge thank you to all of you! Without your support and help, the Education Center would still be a dream, and not actually becoming a reality.

After officially being granted the land for the project we took our ideas to a local architect who drew up our dream building and quantified all the materials needed to build it. He estimated it would take $20,000 to construct the physical structure. We estimated another $20,000 to install electricity and internet, buy computers, buy solar panels, build furniture, paint, and open the doors of the Center. We estimated another $10,00 for an operating budget for the first year and also an emergency fund. This creates a grand total of $50,000 need to build, equip, and open the Education Center. This is a large amount of money and we need your help now more than ever!

Thanks to your generous donations, we had enough money to mold the 1,500 cement blocks needed for the foundation of the building, and also start clearing the land to get it ready to dig foundation trenches. While I was overseeing the construction of the blocks, kids in the community would come up to me and ask what we were building. When I told them we were building a library and computer center they jumped for joy! They ran and told their friends, those friends called over their friends, and before long 50 children were standing in front of me, all wanting to hear what we were building and the programs we were going to offer. The kids would run around the site and pretend to sit in an imaginary chair saying “I am typing on a computer in the computer center” and “I am sitting reading a library book” and “I am painting a picture on paper”. The Education Center is this community's dream, and we can't wait to make it a reality.

If you are interested in holding a fundraiser, or want more information about the Education Center please email kuntzr@gmail.com.

Thank you and best wishes from Ghana,
Rebecca Kuntz and Light for Children Staff 

Links:

• All updates on the Education Center

To start off we would like to say a huge THANK YOU from all of Light for Children-Ghana. We appreciate your mobilization and donations greatly. Without you our dreams of the Education Center would not be possible. 

I wanted to share a little video with you from some of our LIFOC Summer School students from summer 2011. These students were in my ICT computer class and asked me to teach them about filmmaking and photography. I taught them the basics in one week and the week after they were creating interview questions for eachother, the week after that they were filming. They took the project and ran with it. Sadly I didn't have enough time to teach them about the editing process but they laid out the storyboard of what they wanted. This is the video they created. Are they a talented group of kids with the biggest dreams? I have total faith they will achieve them with the amount of dedication and passion they have. 

This is what the education center is all about to us. It's about providing the knowledge and tools to children and letting them run away with it. We want to empower them to dream their biggest dreams and realize their full potential. We want to create a space for children's imaginations to flow and open their minds to the world around them. 

I'm heading to Ghana in two months so we can officially start working on the Education Center, but we need your help to finish fundraising. If we don't reach the $6,000 mark we can't begin any work. We are asking you to forward the link to our project page to 10 friends asking them to make a donation so we can reach our goal and change the lives of thousands of Ghanaian children.

October 17th, 2012 is this year's 3rd and final Matching Day. GlobalGiving is offering a 30% match on all donations up to $1,000 per donor per project.The organization that raises the most funds on Bonus Day will receive an additional $1,000 from GlobalGiving. Let's get all of our friends and family to donate on October 17th so we can get all the money donated on that day matched! 

Thank you for all your support and donations, lets reach our goal of $6,000 so we can begin work on the Education Center in late November!