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LETTER FROM
THE PRESIDENT
Dear Friends,
The Kopeyia Bloomfield Local Authority School
(KOBLAS) was opened on October 10th, 1988, with 80 students
and two literate villagers teaching under a thatched, palm
leaf shade. With land donated by one of the elders, and the
communal labor of the Kopeyia people, plus donations of money,
books, clothes, school supplies, first aid supplies from American
friends (including many American school children), we built
a PRE-Kindergarten-through-9th grade school which now serves
800 students. The KGSF negotiated for teachers and curriculum
supplied by the government of Ghana; KGSF continues to hire
teachers and pay their salaries to teach in classrooms which
the Ghana Education Service would leave unattended.
American volunteers spend time in Kopeyia
tutoring students, and inculcating them with a sense of value
for their education. We initiate extra curricular programs,
and set high standards of attendance for students and teachers.
In 1997, the governor of the region
designated ours a "model school".
Kopeyia students work hard to take full
advantage of the opportunity we provide, and it shows. Consider
this stellar statistic: 97% of our
eight graduating classes (441 students in all) passed their
standardized Ghana National Final Exams. Those 9th
grade graduates have taken the initiative to create the Kopeyia
Old Students Association (KOSA), and charged themselves with
the responsibility to build and diversify the village's economy,
and to maintain and support the Kopeyia School for future
generations. They are applying new farming techniques learned
in Agricultural Science class, improving their families' food
yields; their health and nutrition classes are having a great
impact on the standard of living too. They are tutoring younger
students. They have organized for a European company to drill
a new bore hole which now provides an additional source of
fresh water in the village; and they continue to lobby the
local government for electricity to be connected in Kopeyia.
Since further education is essential to
enable this new generation to maintain and support the village
school and economy in the long-term, we supply scholarships
for high-performing graduates to continue on to high school,
which is private and highly competitive in Ghana. The cost
for tuition, room and board, and books and supplies is $400
per year, far more than any of the villagers could afford.
Donations have helped us sponsor 82 of our best students from
our first EIGHT graduating classes to continue their education
in Ghana's three-year High School system, called Senior Secondary
School. 63 of these students have
been graduated from Senior Secondary School in the past fIVE
years. Many of them are continuing their education
in higher levels.
It is true, "it takes a village",
and I ask you to please be a part of ours. I hope you are
encouraged by these results and will join hands with us by
making a contribution of any amount you can afford. Your gift
will be most appreciated and is completely tax deductible.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Robert Levin, President, KGSF Inc.
PLEASE MAKE YOUR CHECK
PAYABLE TO: KGSF
And mail it to:
KOPEYIA GHANA SCHOOL FUND, INC.
1056 OAKLAND COURT
TEANECK, NJ 07666
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