The Executive Director and Founder of Drive To Inspire Africa (DTI-A), a Ghanaian Non-Governmental Organisation(NGO), Nana Adjoa Hackman, has appealed to the affluent in society to help support the education of the less-privileged in society.
According to her, the gloomy picture out there was not the best as such all must get on board to salvage the situation since government alone cannot address the challenges.
Ms Hackman made the call in Accra on Tuesday when the first 17 female beneficiaries were presented with scholarship packages by the NGO to pursue various academic programmes at the tertiary level.
The packages, which included accommodation, tuition and other educational material, including Laptops were to support the entire Four to Six –year education of the beneficiaries who were selected after a vigorous process.
According to her, the free will to inspire and empower the youth to maximise their potential to transform the country and the continent was the hall mark of the organisation, hence the need for more support to achieve those targets.
The Chief Executive underlined that for each of the beneficiaries, the organisation had made a four to six-year commitment to fund in full of their tuition and accommodation and related matters, and expressed the hope to increase the number of beneficiaries from year to year.
“Our goal at DTI-A is to contribute to empowering as many young people as we can to be the catalyst of positive change for Ghana and Africa, the more we reach out to these young students, especially the females, the more confirmations we receive that all dreams can come true, if only we can support them to have the courage and confidence to pursue their dreams,” she added.
The organisation, Ms Hackman explained, had been in operation for about 7 months, and we were authorised to visit public schools in three
of the 16 Regions of Ghana – Greater-Accra, Eastern and Central Region and incidentally three of the five largest regions in Ghana in terms of population size adding that, “their mandate was expanded to cover 3 additional Regions – Ashanti the second most populous region, Volta and Western Regions.
She further indicated that the three main activities of Drive To Inspire – Africa are namely: Outreach, Mentorship and Scholarship with the help of other institutions, they are also able to offer internship opportunities.
The founder noted that beyond the direct engagements with students, they have also managed to provide training and ongoing support to guidance and counselling officers attached to public schools in the Greater-Accra Region
Additionally, Ms Hackman indicated that the organisation has currently received applications from 174 mentees and 174 mentors from 8 countries – Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, Zambia, Liberia and Zimbabwe.
She expressed gratitude to GH Express Transport Services, Hashcom, KPMG, the Ghana Education Service, Alisa Hotels, Devtraco Group, Cypress Energy, Golden Coast Developers, Hashcom, Serene Insurance Limited, Trasacco Group, St. Michael’s Specialist Hospital, Sol Cement Limited, Wow Logbook, JK Prints, Asaase Radio and Africa Legal Associates (ALP Ghana).
BY LAWRENCE VOMAFA-AKPALU
