Some students at the library. INSET: Frank Abeku
How many volunteer teachers in rural communities have taken the initiative to help the schools they have offered their service to for short periods? Not many. But Frank Abeku Adams, whose research studies for his undergraduate certificate took him to Ekumfi as a volunteer teacher, decided to help the community senior high school.
Thanks to crowdfunding, Frank, an agri-business investor, has been able to stock the libraries at the senior high school and basic schools with the right books which have improved the level of literacy and education in the Ekumfi District.
Through his project, Book The Shelve, Frank is not just putting smiles on the faces of pupils and students in Ekumfi but improving their lives alongside.
Many students in the community are fishermen, hunters and farmers and usually many victims of child trafficking come from Ekumfi, and this is simply because the access to quality education is highly restricted.
“My research studies in 2010 for my undergraduate certificate took me to Ekumfi as a volunteer teacher. Aside it being purely historical research, I took interest in the socio-economic development of the district because of some government documents I came across.
By then I had already registered an organisation back in school, so through that I launched the project here in Ekumfi with the intention of raising more volunteers to come support and help with the illiteracy challenge, but it became a problem so I rather started advocating for funds to stock the empty libraries,” he said.
Book The Shelve, he revealed, is basically about acquiring more books and other reading materials into Ekumfi District to help fight the challenge of illiteracy.
The two key areas he has identified as the source of challenge are the unavailability of reading materials and lack of personnel or proper tuition to guide and fight the illiteracy challenge in the children.
“In fact, in Ekumfi District, all basic schools have no libraries to even have reading materials. So, Book The Shelve is just to solve this problem. Aside advocating and raising funds on a scale of one to 100 per cent, 35 per cent of the funding comes from my pocket and the rest are as a result of donations of books, and small sums of money,” he stated.