Emelia Guo on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Well the dog days of summer are upon us and Emelia, our Africa Coordinator has decided that this would be a good time to come visit. Actually, the incentive was our Board Meeting held June 22. This was a big deal because Emelia is now 7 months pregnant. She is a real trooper! The 90 degree plus heat waves could not deter her. She claims that is a normal temperature in Northern Ghana. The 13 hour airplane trip could not hold her back either. This time around she decided to see a little of Philadelphia, New York City and Boston. I will let her comment on her trip. It has been an adventure to say the least!
Actually her trip has been a real help for the future planning of Leah’s Dream. We spent lots of time talking about how we will use the extra funding boost that we received from our April Fundraiser. We came out with several new goals and one powerful idea for making Leah’s Dream a sustainable reality. Most of you know that we have a side project that has become very popular. Leah had the idea of promoting the shea butter produced by her freinds from the Sankarigu Shea Butter Cooperative in Tamale and other shea producing cooperatives in villages. She started bringing in 10-20 pounds at a time. Emelia has continued this with gifts from the Cooperative. Over the past few years, we have earned over $300.00 for the women by simply packaging the large amounts into 40z. containers and I sell them on my speaking engagements.
Emelia and I met with a couple of extremely interesting women: Alice Lesnick, professor of Education from Bryn Mawr is interested in teaming up with us for our teacher development project and the other, Linda Resnick of WIL about using our Shea Butter experiences as a jumping off point for a microfinance project. Emelia’s brilliantly simple idea is to give micro loans to local craftswomen and earn enough in interest from payback on the loans to fund a scholarship or two each year. In this way, we could also encourage young women who are not academically inclined to join together in producing a commodity or a craft after an apprenticeship of sorts with a master teacher, a sort of vocational education piece adding to our academic piece. Thus a circle has been born. Cool no?
Exam results for our newest applicants (34) should arrive some time next month. After that, we will proudly announce our newest Afafanto Scholarship winners. Keep cool and Stay tuned…Sandee