Aboso Benso D/A School

KG1 class and teachers (1)_edited_edited

Aboso Benso D/A School, Ghana

The Need.

In Ghana, the formalization of early childhood education is a relatively recent development. This has created the need for kindergarten classrooms and trained teachers to house and teach the country's youngest students.

Gomoa Akroful is a poor community which lacked the resources to construct a kindergarten. The local primary school which was built for the community by the British in the 1950's was fully enrolled and occupied by children in grades 1-8. There was a strong interest in the community to add a kindergarten class for their youngest children.

Prior to the completion of our project, the village's youngest students attended kindergarten with their teacher in the only available structure…a dilapidated, unhygienic goat shed. This shed had space for 20-30 children at most and the roof leaked so badly class could not be held on rainy days. (See photos).

Due to space limitations and the deplorable conditions, many young children in the community who wanted to attend school were forced to stay home.

The Project.

Additional Support.

Over the ensuing years we have provided ongoing support to Aboso Benso schoo including:

2018 Gary's Fund provided $1,300 for small-scale building improvements such as exterior plastering and the interior and exterior painting of the school which was completed without paint being applied.
2023 With a $3,000 donation we provided funds to construct a school kitchen providing a safe, clean space for food storage, preparation and distribution
2024 In partnership with our Ghanaian partner, we started a feeding program for the kindergarten students attending our school there. Our $4,000 donation covers the cost for:
The school cook's salary
Transportation costs for regular marketing trips and food deliveries
Nutritious freshly cooked lunches for the kindergarteners using local ingredients:

Cost/child/day = 64 cents which includes their food, the cook's salary and the cost of fuel for food marketing and transport.
We rounded up our donation to $4,000 to cover an extra kitchen construction expense.

Many families in this impoverished community cannot come up with the equivalent of 64 cents to pay for their child's school lunch. In the past the school has fed them anyway but it will relieve a real burden on the families and the school to cover these extremely minimal costs (by our standards).

In 2014, Gary's Fund accepted a proposal from our Ghanaian partner, Ghanaian Mother's Hope, and made a donation of $13,000 to fund the construction of a two classroom building to house Kindergarten 1 (K-1) and Kindergarten 2 (K-2) classes in Gomoa Akroful. This donation was made possible in part due to a significant contribution from Leslie Moser's Harvard Business School class and covered the costs of the the following:

A permanent two classroom building 
An office and store room  
A 5-seater latrine  
Furniture and books

The community was delighted by these new classrooms for their youngest students. The school was completed in late spring 2015 and was immediately occupied by around 30 young children along with their teachers. By 2017 the school had an enrollment of 73 children. It is a registered government school with the Ghanaian Ministry of Education.

The Community.

The community of Gomoa is impoverished agricultural village with a population of about 4,000. It is located approximately 2 hours southwest of the Ghanaian capitol city of Accra.

Gomoa Akroful has shown a strong commitment to the education of its children going back over 70 years. The people there have managed to continuously maintain and operate a primary school which was built for them in 1947 by the British government. However, when we received our project proposal, this primary school was at full capacity with no space for kindergarten classrooms and insufficient resources to construct them.

Lunch is the main meal of the day. Although the cost is only a few cents per child many families do not have the ability in this impoverished community to make this small contribution. Funding the meals takes financial pressure off the families and increases school enrollment.

Because they are able to grow food and are also located near the ocean making fresh seafood available, the children eat a freshly cooked meal using local ingredients everyday at lunch. Some menu examples are:

Rice with Palava sauce and salmon or tuna fish.
Waakye and pepper with egg-vegetable salad
Banky and Palm nut soup wiht tuna fish, salmon, okro stew
Beans and gari with fried plantain
Jollof rice with sausage or egg.

The Community Contribution.

The existing primary school has a school management team and parent teacher association, who raised a portion of the funds for the construction of our pre-school project. The local district education office provided educational materials

Lunch is the main meal of the day. Different from our other schools, Aboso Benso students receive fresh food directly purchased from the local food markets by our partner in Ghana. The food is cooked in the school kitchen which was constructed with donated funds from Gary's Fund by the school cook daily.Although the cost is only a few cents per child many families do not have the ability in this impoverished community to make this small contribution. The families contriubute what they can and the school has covered the extra cost rather than turning the young children away. Our funding of the 2024 feeding program will take pressure off the school and the parents

All photos provided by Ghanaian Mothers Hope.