Projects Abroad Foundation:
encouraging young people into active citizenship
Schools for Active Citizenship
"We want an end to apathy. We want ordinary children to take part in our democracy. We want them to campaign and to care. Democracy needs active citizens.”,
-- Joseph Quaye, social media influencer, Ghana, 2024
We have created in Akokoa, which is an ordinary African village in the Aquapem Hills of Ghana, a School for Active Citizenship for local children.
It was an experiment, but now it is our first proven success.
Our School for Active Citizenship has now had over 600 pupils, and our alumni are already becoming active in their communities.
OUR SCHOOL IN GHANA
Here we will summarise our needs, achievements aims.
We are seeking at this stage to fundraise £108,000:
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for developing our current school: £38,000
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for helping our active alumni: £7,000 for developing three new Schools for Active Citizenship in collaboration with existing schools: £63,000
Before we arrived in Akokoa village in 2011, there was no school there at all. Now, there are 350 kids attending every day up to the age of 14.
Just having an ordinary school was not enough. After a couple of years, we specifically designed the school to combat a key problem identified by so many Ghanaians, indeed so many Africans, apathy. We wanted to fight apathy about the big issues facing Ghana and all of Africa, its economies, societies and cultures.
In the classroom and in the school council, in the girls’ club and in debates, the children in our school are taught to question everything about their lives, their school, their village and their society. They are encouraged to find solutions through discussion and teamwork. We are teaching young people to have self-confidence and high self-esteem.
We have lively teachers and classes with no more than 25 children in them. We organise team sports and teach the children to make music together.
Our children and teachers are also enthusiastically greening their school and village – and taking their green message to the parents and community.
We now have our first alumni and we can already see the impact we are making. Some of our alumni are already making changes in their communities. We get great conventional results and we are also making active citizens.
The school is run by Ghanaians for Ghanaians. Our Project Manager is Princely Bondzie, who lives locally. The school is administered by a Ghanaian NGO. Princely always takes account of the opinions in the village of Akokoa itself and the local history and culture.
At the same time, we have also taken inspiration – and our school name – from a Norwegian, Tore Eikeland (1990-2011), who devoted his short life to getting young people active in their societies, before he was killed in the mass murder at Utøya. The alumni we support are called ‘Tore Scholars’ in his memory.
SUMMARY
Inspired by Tore Eikeland, and with the full support of the community of Akokoa, we have identified apathy as our enemy. We have experimented with a way of defeating this enemy: a School for Active Citizenship.
We are already starting to have an impact through our young alumni. We have great plans which we will need more financial backing to carry out:
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in the school – with more teaching equipment and support for greening and other activities
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with our alumni, to help them become successful active citizens
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for new schools – we are ready to go to Tanzania, to Nepal and to Accra (Ghana’s capital).
We need your help to do this.
Thank you for your interest!
