Bloomfield School, Ghana

The Kopeyia Ghana School Fund is helping to educate a generation of children in the rural fanning village of Kopeyia, where there is no electricity or running water. Prior to the project, villagers had no access to the outside world, spoke no English - the official language of Ghana - and were illiterate. Then in 1988, The Fund began a grassroots effort to build a school to bring development to the village. Now, eight years later, children eagerly learn all subjects in K-9th grade classes taught by government accredited Ghanaian teachers in a beautiful model school built by The Fund; they read in a library fully stocked by books donated by Americans; they take special classes and are tutored by visiting American teachers; and volunteers like you.

Students also proudly participate in the school marching band and sports teams. The students also actively share the richness of their culture and learn about ours through pen-pal writing, cultural and educational exchanges with a series of sister schools in America. The children's dream and The Fund's mission, is to continue their education through college and then return to Kopeyia with the skills necessary to maintain the school and foster development in their community. Today , 28 Kopeyia students have completed their first year of senior secondary and are ready to proceed to the next grade. More students are ready to graduate from the Kopeyia school and are starting to apply to senior secondary schools, which are private in Ghana.

The Kopeyia Ghana School Fund has brought hope to this remote African village, that through education, Kopeyians will be able to break the vicious cycle of third-world poverty. Volunteer with us to provide the nourishment to see them through.

Kopeyia, a small village of approximately one thousand inhabitants in the extreme south-eastern part of the lower Volta region of Ghana, West Africa, and less than seven kilometres from the Ghana-Togo border. The language and people of the region are known as Ewé, although there are many regional variations in custom and dialect. The village is largely a traditional agrarian society, maize and cassava being the staple crops with a variety of vegetables also grown independently in commercial garden plots, set in a paleo-fluvial geomorphology; archaic lake remnants of the Volta river's shifted deltic plume system.

The area is one of many in rural Ghana suffering from continuing currency inflation and economic downturn. Locally grown crops are sold at local markets after transport by local growers, usually women who, when they can afford to do so, take their loads on trotros, although headloading is a very common means of such goods conveyance Produce is usually conveyed with a metal head pan or basket resting on a cloth cushion on the top of the skull. Both physical and cultural problems have long been associated with this. This is a form of goods conveyance almost exclusively the domain of women.

The low level of agricultural surplus reflects the correspondingly low average wage rate in this largely subsistence economy. The relatively high level of coastal population density and diffused pattern of economic activity (usually with low returns) in Kopeyia is characteristic of much of Sub-Saharan Africa (I.T Transport Ltd. 1996:17; Agarwal et al 1994:14). There is some light industry in the form of motor repair, metal fabrication and welding and carpentry in the nearest centre, the connurbated border town of Aflao-Denu (pop. 90 000). However the area's rural population could be described as a largely pre-industrial, agrarian one with limited amounts of technological and industrial development when compared to industrialised OECD countries.

"The school is clearly a labour of love for them, for you, and most impressively for the community." Robert H. Arbuckle Cultural Affairs Officer U.S. Embassy Accra, Ghana January 29, 2003 Dear Mr. Levin, First of all, thank you for your generosity by visiting us, the Seventh Grade Community.

We learned so much more about the value of African music in the Ewe tribe. We clap for you! And we truly appreciate the teaching you brought to the classes as well as to the Kopeyia village. Without your help, students wouldn't even have a chance for the opportunity of an education. Yesterday, everyone watched the video taped during 1988-1994 and observed the improvement in the newly built school over time. All because of your efforts and the villagers' hard work, we are now more eager than ever as a 7th grade, to push ourselves in raising materials to benefit Kopeyia.

Thank you again for everything, and wish you good luck on your future excursions to Ghana and with hopes for success in this programme. Sincerely, The Dwight-Englewood Seventh Grade, Class of 2008 Erica Zendell, Class Senator PS - Thanks, Robert, the students really enjoyed your visit!

April 5, 2000 During my service as United States Ambassador to Ghana from 1989 to 1992, my wife and I had occasion to visit Kopeyia at the invitation of Robert Levin. During a 1991 visit, I laid the cornerstone for one of the school buildings. We were greatly impressed with the spirit of Kopeyia village and the commitment of both the adults and children to what was then a quite new school.

We were especially struck by the success of Mr. Levin and others at a grassroots, non-governmental level of linking the Kopeyia school to American school children, adults, and Organisations especially in the New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut area. Since our departure from Ghana almost eight years ago, the school has continued to prosper with strong support from the Kopeyia Ghana School Fund in the United States and from the village of Kopeyia. Raymond C. Ewing former United States Ambassador to Ghana

April 6, 2000 My name is Steven Finkelstein and I am a teacher at the Wheatley School, a high school consistently rated as one of the top high schools in the country. Presently our students, staff, administration, Board of Education, and Parent Teacher Association are involved in a project with the Kopeyia Ghana School Fund in which 200 old bicycles collected from the community will be shipped to Kopeyia with the help of K-Mart and the collaboration of Newsday, the region's most widely distributed newspaper.

In conjunction with the Institute for Transportation Development Policy's"Afri-Bike" program (funded in part by the World Bank), I will volunteer for two weeks this July and go to Kopeyia with other volunteers to deliver the bicycles and to assist in a highly organised training session which will be attended by many, including recent graduates of the Kopeyia School.

The goal of my trip will be to train these individuals in running a bicycle repair business in Kopeyia. Bicycles represent an environmentally and economically appropriate form of transportation technology for our friends in Kopeyia, most of whom will never have the luxury of owning an automobile. Bicycles can be used to get to and from school, as a means for mothers to get to the market or collect fuel wood, for health workers to be more effective, and so on. In addition, peripheral businesses, ranging from the weaving of bicycle baskets to the construction of heavy duty human powered work vehicles and machines, can ultimately be developed and will be encouraged through the middle school's vocational education program.

This project promises Kopeyia increased mobility and growth. Only in a place like Kopeyia is there a chance of success for such a program in Ghana. This is because of the momentum and motivation created by the Kopeyia School. Clearly this is no ordinary school. Yours in education, Steven Finkelstein The Wheatley School Old Westbury, NY