Projects for Peace participants Eleanor Goddard ’25 and Stephen Amankonah Sekyere ’27 bring technology—and hope—to middle-schoolers in West Africa
Eleanor Goddard ’25 lived in Ghana for seventh and eighth grade and had been eager to return ever since. “Being in Ghana is more of a feeling—it’s like listening to your favorite song and thinking, ‘Everything’s going to be OK,’” says Goddard, a biochemistry major from Minneapolis. “The people of Ghana smile about everything. They put other people first. They’re part of such an amazing community that it’s hard not to want to go there.”
Last fall, Goddard met Stephen Amankonah Sekyere ’27, an economics and mathematics double major from Kumasi, Ghana, at an information session for Projects for Peace, which has funded more than 2,000 grassroots student projects worldwide since its founding in 2007. (Occidental’s participation dates back to 2009, when three seniors received funding for a project in Honduras.) The two instantly hit it off, Goddard recalls. “We ended up walking around campus for hours talking about this project we wanted to do,” she says. “We immediately started breaking down everything.”
After much discussion, Goddard and Sekyere combined their twin loves—STEM and Ghana—and pitched a project to teach a STEM class to a group of Ghanaian schoolgirls. Subsequently, Projects for Peace awarded them $10,000 to fund their travel, resources, and related expenses, and this past August, they spent four weeks working with a small class of middle-schoolers at Alpha-Morning Dew Montessori School in Ablekuma.
“There’s a lack of resources in Ghana, especially for people who really want to do STEM,” says Sekyere, who was excited to bring computers to the classroom. “It’s going to cause many girls in Ghana to be part of this technological revolution,” he adds. “I felt so happy and so excited, seeing the joy, seeing the smiles on the faces of those girls, and I’ve been able to see them do amazing stuff with these computers.”
He and Goddard focused their lessons on teaching students how to use computers’ basic functions and how to research topics through technology. “We had a curriculum where they would do research on certain animals—their habitat, their life cycle, their predators, their prey—so that they could get interested in things that they don’t see on a daily basis,” Goddard says. “Polar bears or wolves are not going to be in West Africa. You really need that computer to connect your world with other worlds.”
In working with the students, Sekyere connected the applications of technology to their everyday lives, such as kitchen appliances, pens, or even eyeglasses. “All that they think of as technology was computers or laptops, but they didn’t know that technology is anything that makes work easier for humanity,” he says.
Goddard says Ghana’s culture of inclusion and welcoming nature is unique. “I would walk around and little kids would just come and hold two of my fingers,” she says. “There was one day where there was a class activity to make envelopes and write letters. And now I have 20 envelopes in my dresser at home, because they all wrote letters like, I love you. Auntie Ellie, please come back and be my teacher.”
Sekyere believes their collaboration—as a Ghanaian going to college in America and a female student in STEM—inspired the class, making these students’ dreams of higher education seem attainable. “Seeing a white girl doing chemistry in college, girls in Ghana are so excited,” he says. “Eleanor was able to talk to them about growing up and what she went through as a girl in science.”
Overall, Projects for Peace showed how well the pair worked together and collaborated, bringing different perspectives and skills. Their shared passions for STEM and Ghana brought excitement to the project.
“There’s something in our hearts that’s the same,” Goddard says. “We came to this project from very different backgrounds, but we clicked immediately. You have to think that there’s a purpose for this.”
