Red Deer’s Tools for Schools Africa Foundation is about to set off on its third major project.
The charitable organization, started by retired teacher and current Foundation chairwoman Marilyn Pottage, has in the past held training sessions for hundreds of Ghanaian teachers and sent over tens of thousands of dollars worth of school supplies.
Now, it looks to double its scholarship efforts and build a $70,000 addition on a boarding house for female students in the northern Ghana town of Damongo.
“(Education) is the only way women in the northern region have any choices . . . if they don’t have education, they have no source of any significant income,” Pottage said Monday. “That means they’ll be married off at a young age, usually as second, third, or fourth wife . . . (and) spend their lives in abject poverty.”
Pottage lived in Damongo for a time in the 1960s, when her parents worked on an agricultural program supported by the Canadian International Development Agency and Oxfam.
Tools for Schools focuses its efforts on increasing the post-primary educational opportunities for girls in Damongo.
From the surrounding villages, many students must leave home and stay in St. Anne’s Boarding House in town to attend school.
“It’s overcrowded and they have a waiting list a mile long,” Pottage said of St. Anne’s.
The house is rundown, the cooking facilities currently consist of an oven made of a truck wheel with a hole cut in the side, and there are no hand-washing facilities. The expansion will put in a proper kitchen and increase the number of available beds from 24 to 46.
Twelve architecture students from the University of Manitoba leave for Damongo in May. They’ll stay there about a month and build the addition.
Tools for Schools already funded four junior high and 10 high school students through scholarships totalling $4,200, and now Pottage says “we’ll double it.”
In the future, Pottage hopes to partner with Red Deer sponsor families to get exceptional students financial backing to attend university or nursing or teaching programs.
“Our strength is to source out (for) these really talented young women,” said Pottage. “But this is a long-term goal. We’re not there yet.”
To help them get there, Tools for Schools is in the midst of a fundraising effort to augment the money already collected for their upcoming projects.
If they make enough selling $50 themed African gift baskets, available for delivery by contacting Pottage at marilynpottage@telus.net or 403-340-3889, they hope to be able to install two hand-washing sinks in the boarding house’s dining room and create a contingency fund for the project.
mgauk@www.reddeeradvocate.com