Ghanaian Migrants Information Services - Students aid Ghana schools

SPRINGFIELD - A math lesson for the third-graders in Andrea J. Boyko's class at Dorman Elementary School is yielding school lunches for impoverished children halfway across the globe.

Boyko wanted her students to collect a thousand things - as a way to concretely illustrate that number - and came up with the idea of collecting 1,000 quarters to benefit the children in four schools in Ghana, West Africa.

Boyko, executive director of a nonprofit organization that works with those schools, knows firsthand the conditions that students in West Africa face. She went there as a volunteer one summer some years ago, lived in an orphanage and taught in a nearby school. Like many schools in Ghana, it offered by way of facilities little more than than a chalkboard and wooden benches.

"I came home feeling like there has to be something that I can do," Boyko said.

That something eventually turned into a nonprofit organization known as the Future Leaders of Ghana, founded by Boyko and the director of the orphanage which is for children orphaned by HIV and AIDS.

Since then, Boyko has spent much of her vacation time in Ghana striving to improve the lives of the children at four schools.

Boyko originally thought to ask her students here to collect 1,000 dimes, but she says she upped the ante to quarters in order to boost the targeted goal from $100 to $250.

The proceeds, she decided, would help provide school lunches to the students in Africa, who typically don't get any lunch at all while they are in school.

"The kids literally sit all day without lunch, and we know how hard that would be," Boyko said recently she introduced a visitor to her Dorman classroom.

Her students murmured their assent.

Boyko said bellies in her classroom at Dorman start growling by 10:30 or 11 a.m. Her students eagerly embraced their assignment, perhaps living up Boyko's class rules, posted prominently on the wall. There are only two of them: "be kind" and "work hard."

"I just found some old quarters laying around," said Kari J. Brown of the coins he gathered at home to contribute to the effort.

Shyanna M. Foster said she found some quarters on the floor of her home, too, and asked her mother for a few more.

The thousand quarters, once collected, made for a very tangible display, Boyko said. "We could almost barely lift it when we were done," she said.

Attendance at the Ghanaian school which has recently started the lunch program is already on the rise, Boyko said.

The students said it felt good to be able to help others.

"I think it was good to help those kids," Anthony D. Morales said, adding that he believes eating lunch will help the children study harder.

"I think it's nice that we are doing this for Ghana, and I feel proud of myself," said Kari.

"I think it's good that they get to eat lunch," Shyanna said.

Boyko, who has taught at Dorman for five years, feels her experiences in Ghana has sharpened her teaching skills. "You really have to think outside the box," she said.

Her students in Springfield and Ghana alike have benefited from learning about their counterparts overseas, Boyko said. Her Springfield students, who sometimes perceive themselves as being poor, are often astonished to learn just how much they really have, she said.

"It's such an interesting contrast," Boyko said.

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