17-year old Samatha Boateng holds Academic Bowl Competition at Gbawe, set to open 2nd library in Kumasi
Samantha Boateng, a 17 year old student of William and Mary College
in the United States, is here again to build a second library at
Asuodei, a village one hour away from Kumasi in the Ashanti Region.
This new library’s location holds a special place in the heart of
Samantha Boateng because 50 years ago her grandfather built a school for
this same community that she will be adding on to.
Last year, Samantha started a project of building a library annually
in Ghana. She built the first library, known as the Read2Lead New School
Library Centre, at Gbawe in the Ga South District in the Greater Accra
Region, in the Gbawe Cluster of Schools and its nearby communities,
serving over 5,000 pupils.
As the Founder of Read2Lead, an organization that was created to
breed the next generation of leaders through reading, Samantha
Boateng, aided by her mother Francisca Boateng, and a project team from
the New School of Northern Virginia, USA, they were able to gather
14,000 books to stock the first library.
Speaking to the B&FT Weekend, “she stated that it surprise me
mostly when I realized that a developing country like Ghana lacks such
facilities because in US in my community we had a lot of libraries all
around.”
Academic Bowl Competition
To monitor and evaluate how the first library is having a positive
impact on the lives of over the 5,000 pupils in the Gbawe Cluster of
Schools and surrounding schools, that also use the library, Read2Lead is
organizing a quiz competition for the pupils this Saturday.
The competition, Academic Bowl Competition, will see more than 10
schools in the Gbawe community participant to win prizes including
tablets. Part of the funds raised will go to help maintain and improve
certain aspects of the library in Gbawe.
However there will be prizes which will go to the first top five
students in the three top schools, in addition with other cool prizes
like tablets, and games. After the quiz competition, there will be a
funfair and other exciting activities for the students and the people in
the neighborhood as a way of
As to how Read2Lead came about, she explained that “as an avid
reader, it bewilders me that children my age have never stepped foot
into a library nor do they know what one is. Books are so important to
all people, young and old, to strengthen our minds and expand our
intellects to be the engineers, politicians, teachers, and doctors of
society. I want to help these children by starting an initiative called
Read 2 Lead.”
Challenges
“During our grand opening, which was held during the political year,
that was last year, we took pictures with some of the political leaders
which made people to think the project belong to a one sided party and
this made them stop sponsoring us.”
Samantha also explained that the cost of income for most of the
things needed for improving the project was twice the prices they had
estimated.
Ms. Boateng hopes that in a few years to come her organization will
add a lot of educational activities like bringing students from outside
to teach students here in the library to improve on their educational
back ground.
She further stated that “also we are looking for more sponsors to
come support this projects more especially the oncoming event on this
Saturday with food, drinks etc.”
The grand opening of the Asuodei Library will be on the 26th of June in Kumasi as that day actually marks the birth of her grandfather, the founder of the school to honour him.
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