School Opening

Hello everyone!

Hope everyone is having a great summer so far. We are happy and excited to announce that Erica Memorial Preparatory School is finally ready to open with one Pre-KG class starting next week! It has been a long, multi-year process where we ran into many obstacles but we wanted to thank everyone who made it possible for us to achieve this huge milestone!

Connie went back to Ghana in June to check on the progress of the building and to make sure the school was still on track to open this year. One major challenge we faced with the school building was the heavy rains in Ghana caused one of our classroom walls to collapse. This forced us to have to readjust building priorities but during her time in Ghana, we were able to fix the collapsed walls, finish the cement work for two of the four classrooms, build a toilet, and refurbish the land surrounding our school.

Connie and Success, our project coordinator in Ghana, also spent a lot of time preparing for the opening of our school and discussed what our school operating model and approach should be. We built the school with the mission of being able to provide kids with access to education in an area that lacked schools and give underprivileged kids an opportunity to learn. At the same time, we want to build a school that creates jobs and is self-sustainable. To encourage more students to attend, we have a daily school fee instead of a one-time semester fee upfront. The daily fee includes basic necessities such as teacher fees, transportation, and lunch. In order to give more kids access to affordable Pre-KG education, we would like to sponsor kids from families that need it. We are currently looking for people to participate in our pilot program for sponsoring school children! Please contact us at info@ericasglobaloutreach.org if you would like more information or if you would like to participate.

While our building is now ready for students, there is still a long journey ahead of us and a lot of work to be done to improve our school. In order to encourage more students to attend, we will need to improve our building facilities, provide more classroom furniture and school supplies, and find alternative transportation options to and from the school. As of now we do not have a school bus and will be using taxis to bring students to and from the school. In order to reduce operating costs, we would like to purchase a school bus of our own to transport students daily.

Our next fundraiser will be sometime this Fall but in the meantime, any donations [they are tax deductible!] to support our school would be greatly appreciated. As always, thank you for all your support! None of this would be possible without you. Stay tuned for school updates and pictures 🙂

Erica’s Global Outreach