LANE CENTRE, FROSTBURG STATE UNIVERSITY, MD- A college student spends $3.85 on a single cookies and cream javalanche coffee from the Java City café. It’s the third one she has had today. AFRICA – A child dies every three seconds from extreme poverty and AIDS. More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every single day when less than 30 cents per day would pay for a child's school fees, supplies, uniform, and meals for an entire school year. How often do we stop and give thanks for what we have? Not as often as we take simple things such as clean drinking water, a comfy bed to sleep in every night, heat, food and nice clothes for granted. Not to mention the fact that we are in third level education on the way to becoming qualified in a profession of our choice. The thought of a child dying from hunger rarely crosses our minds. We don’t allow it to. If we don’t think about it it’s not happening, right? This cannot be said for one group of US students, whose outlook on life changed dramatically after a school exchange to Ghana, West Africa in 2005. Ghana is a country located on the Gulf of Guinea, only a few degrees north of the Equator, therefore giving it a warm climate. “I was there for like a month” remembers Tony Caccavo, a high school teacher in Springfield, Vermont. When asked to recount his initial reaction when he arrived in Ghana, Tony admits, “I found it hard to adjust to the level of poverty. I can understand poverty to some extent here in the US but it was nothing in comparison. The first week was really difficult but it was a phenomenal experience” he adds. It all started when Tony’s brother, Nick Caccavo and Sonja Good Stefani went to Ghana for a semester of study abroad from the University of Vermont and Tufts University. Nick recalls his initial thoughts of Ghana. “You see a lot of things that are pretty cool and a lot that are unjust,” he explains. “People don’t have the opportunities to advance themselves. I found that frustrating”. “When we think of those in the developing world people normally think poor them. Just throw some money their way but that’s not enough”. Nick took a different approach. “I felt I could do something to really make a difference”. After returning to the US, one particular experience he had in Ghana wouldn’t leave his mind. It was the day he made a journey with some of his Ghanaian college friends to visit the library in Ghana. The community had fought for a library in Ghana for a long time. Nick explains that the Library was missing some essential items. “They went to all the trouble to get a Library but when we walked in the door there was only like five books on a table!” he exclaimed. Before returning to the US, Nick and Sonja met Kwabana Danso, a full-time student and native of Ghana. “I told them my problems about the books and asked if they could help me from the US,” Danso explains. Nick and Sonja started mobilizing family and friends. It was at this time that they enlisted the help of other American students who had also made the trip in 2005. They began a book drive to stock the library Nick had seen in Ghana. They went to their old high schools and local libraries in the US that donated books to their cause. In total they raised almost ten thousand books to stock the empty library back in Ghana. It was during the book drive that the group of friends decided to formally establish themselves as an organisation. After gathering all the books they were unable to finance the $3,000 needed to ship the books from the US to Ghana. “It was tough at the time”, recalls Nick, “because we weren’t an organisation”. While people who knew them knew that the funds that were raised, through selling raffle tickets, donations, tabling events, were going towards a good cause, some people were confused. “People were sceptical because we were not an organisation,” Nick explains. Nick, Sonja, Danso and their friends, who now included Sam Dupre and Nick’s brother Tony Caccavo, then established the Yonso Project. This non profit organization devoted itself to increasing educational and economic achievement in the developing world. By focusing their efforts on a single area of rural Ghana, currently four small towns with a combined population of about 12,000, they are tackling some of the largest problems facing the developing world on an effective, manageable scale. The Yonso Project exists to address the needs of the people in the towns we serve by implementing and funding programs that serve both the community as a whole and each individual or family they work with. “Our mission is to improve the living conditions of the people by providing education and economic opportunities for them,” explains Danso. He goes on to say that in his part of the world they lack educational resources. “Some kids have not even seen what a computer is like before,” he states. Danso also talks about the high dropout rates in Ghana and says that a lack of incentive results in the kids going back into poverty, adding, “There are enormous problems in the developing world because people don’t have the means to care”. When asked where the name of the project originated, Danso says that the project originally started in the Yonso community only. It later expanded to the nearby towns of Apaah, Kyekyewere and Akrofoso. Yonso means “beyond Oyon”. Danso tells the story of how before you get to Yonso town you have to cross the Oyon River. “The history is that the ancient people called it the town beyond Oyon so that is why it is called Yonso” he explains. To address these issues The Yonso Project has implemented a number of programmes to help Ghana with economic stability and educational opportunities. Sonja Good Stefani is the person who manages the Yonso Project’s scholarship program and oversees fundraising and donor relations. In its first year the scholarship programme provided 14 scholarships. By the next year the number of scholarships available had grown to 100. “The number of scholarships depends on the number of sponsors I can find,” explains Sonja. Donors are recruited through advertising on the Yonso Project’s website and in their newsletter. The scholarships are awarded based on a child’s need, although a number are awarded on a merit basis. Sonja explains that although education until high school is free, the children cannot go to junior and middle schools if they don’t have a uniform and books. She highlights that the main point of the scholarship programme is to get the kids into school. “The Yonso Project scholarship programme is as transparent as possible, as the governments know that the money is going to the kids. It doesn’t get lost in overheads or administrative costs”. To receive a scholarship the kids go through an interview and application process. Once they are chosen to receive a scholarship, they are evaluated every two years. “If they haven’t met the required grades after two years they get booted from the programme,” she explains. Sonja further comments that if a child’s grades fall for a justifiable reason, such as family illness or the need to work during good weather, then they don’t get removed from the programme. Sonja admits that the scholarship programme is always in need of new donors. “It’s becoming more and more expensive just to support the kids in high school,” she says. There are tonnes of kids, in Ghana and the surrounding areas, that need scholarships but there is no way the Yonso Project has enough of funding to support them all. “Our main goal is to see as many rural poor having a good standard of education and living so that they can improve the standards of the next generation” comments Danso. The Yonso Project is always dedicated to improving the lives of the poor by improving education and economic sustainability. The Yonso Project’s microlending programme has proven very successful in achieving such goals. This program is modelled on the work of Muhammad Yunus and his objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves. Yunus, also known as the Banker of the poor, and Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 Nobel Peace Prize 2006 for their efforts to create economic and social development from below. “Microlending is like any other kind of lending, it’s just a smaller amount” explains Nick. Microloans fight poverty by increasing local economic activity organically. Like any lender, the Yonso Project expects repayment, which forces the recipients of the money to use their loans wisely and effectively. This initiative has allowed some shops in Ghana to buy freezers and some hair dressers to but electrical items such as hair curlers. “It brings a total new element to the scene” comments Nick. The chart below shows an example of the average weekly finances for an individual borrower prior to entering our program and then for each of their first three loans after entering our program. Sam Dupre befriended Nick Caccavo while they were both undergrads at the University of Vermont. Currently a conservation biology graduate student at Frostburg State University, Sam remembers his first trip to Ghana. “It was eye opening. I had never been to a developing country before” recalls Sam. He spent two months of summer 2006 in Ghana and currently helps to promote ecological sustainability in rural Ghana. Poaching and logging trees are two major problems in the forests around Ghana. While hunters and loggers are merely trying to support their families, the cumulative effect of such human activity in the forest is disastrous. To combat this problem Sam introduced the bamboo bike programme to the Yonso project in 2009. This initiative provides alternative means of employment for the men who are engaged in such activities. “Essentially we provide a workshop and parts. Then they harvest the bamboo and they build the bikes that are then sent back to California. They get sixty dollars per bike, triple what they’d be making poaching”. When asked about future ecological programme possibilities, Sam says that they are currently considering a bamboo bike stand programme. He feels that this would be a wise step forward for the Yonso project because bike stands are much easier to make. He also admits that one of the largest US bike companies has expressed interest in the possible new adventure. “Our main goal is to sustain the programmes we have and extend to other communities”, Danso reveals as he talks about the future plans for the Yonso Project. At the moment ninety percent of support for the Yonso Project comes from the US and project founder Nick hopes that in the future Ghana will become self-sufficient. “Long term we’d like to transition more of the responsibility to the staff in Ghana,” he explains. All the US volunteers anticipate their next trip back to Ghana. “I was thinking about going over there last summer but my job got extended. I would love to go back” Tony admits. When asked what draws him back to Ghana he reveals, “I just got a sense of peace there. The people were the nicest people I’ve ever run into”. For more info or to make a donation visit: http://www.yonsoproject.org/