LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT on self sufficiency

30 December, 2006

My Dear Friends and Family in Kopeyia, I greet you today with my heart full of joy. Ndor – good afternoon. Godwin Agbeli and I planted the seeds of education in Kopeyia on this great plot of land provided by Korkuga Tenge. Working with the greater Kopeyia community and with my generous friends in the USA we have raised this seedling school from its infancy. We have been watering and pruning it, giving it love and care to help it grow. The school is almost 19 years old. It has grown tall and strong, and the roots of education are now firmly established and reach to every corner of Kopeyia. The school is now a tree with ripe fruit on every branch.

Today is a day I have dreamed of for a long time. Today I see clearly and confidently that if you harvest the big and ripe and plentiful fruits, bending the branches of this tree, our school, and eat the sweet fruits of our labor, you will have the strength and wisdom to help your village and school thrive and prosper. Now I am sure you have the skills and the tools and even the instruction manual to use the information it provides to feed your families well and to keep the school strong.

It is with the confidence I have from this beautiful vision before me that I announce my retirement from my work with the Kopeyia Bloomfield Local Authority Schools. This is your school now and I encourage you to protect it and to use well the powerful information it provides. If you let the fruit drop from the trees and spoil on the ground, then nothing good will have come from our hard work. But since I know you are hungry to improve your lives, I am sure that you will eat to satisfy and use that nourishment to work hard, to grow stronger the life of your community. But to succeed you must work hard and you must not let fear get in your way.

During my visit this week I have had discussions night and day with the leaders of every branch of the Kopeyia community. We shared many ideas and identified the actions you can take to accomplish this. We are all confident if you use the resources, now ripe, that your community has, you can by all means do it. In fact, everybody I spoke with assured me that they will see to success.

Through the end of the current school year (August 2007) KGSF will continue to pay salaries to provide teachers to fill the classrooms that the Ghana Education Service leaves empty. And though I will no longer be fundraising for this project, I will send the money KGSF still has on account in the US to continue to support scholarships for the Kopeyia Bloomfield Local Authority School’s (KOBLAS) best qualified students. I suggest the community start its own scholarship bank account, so that in a few years when KGSF money runs out you will be able to send your children to continue their education.

A great Ghanaian master drummer, Abraham Kobina Adzenyah, was the university professor who introduced me to Ghanaian culture, which is actually what led to me Kopeyia in 1988 to study drumming, singing and dancing with Godwin Agbeli. Abraham also taught me to always aim for ‘excellent’, so that when I fall down I can land on ‘very good’.

I highly commend the Kopeyia community for aiming high and trying to summon Torgbui Kpotaka IV from ablotsi – (overseas). You have aimed for excellent and I see you have landed on very good. Chief Kpotaka IV has come, but he has landed in Viepe and in Akame. I heartily encourage you, as I have done, to summon him again, this time all the way back, for him to live day and night in Kopeyia. If he lives among you and pays attention to the school, he can be another great contributor to this place. I have even recommended that he become an executive of the KOBLAS PTA.

For an idealistic project like this to succeed, one must overcome obstacles great and small. We have done so working together all these years and my visit this week was no exception. With your help and the aid of the still active spirit of the late great Godwin Kwasivi Agbeli, we have cleared a path to continued success. As I stand here now I am completely free with all of you, with each and everyone in Kopeyia. A man retires from his work, but he never retires from his family. I will come to visit here again and though I will spend most of my time playing with my ‘Kopeyia grandchildren’, I will be happy to help the school and improve life through education in Kopeyia. I hope you will keep me informed of the great results your actions achieve and that you will think of me and invite me to bring my American family to visit you again and again.

If you give a man a fish he will eat for a day. If you teach him how to fish, he can feed his family for the rest of his life. I have worked hard with you for 19 years now to bring this school here, to cultivate it, to nourish it, to support it, and to maintain it well. Now you know how to fish, and it is time you started feeding yourselves. Now you know how to utilize the school well and how to maintain it. Use the education you gain in the school; use that powerful information to improve the life of your community.

As Godwin challenged us, I also say, “Whatever you do, do it well.”

Dagbe. Akpe nami katan. Good luck. Thank you all.

Robert Levin
President, Kopeyia Ghana School Fund, Inc.