Students create national nonprofit group to provide education in Ghana

Justin Nyberg '01 recalled a moment, two years ago, when he and Arthur Whitman '01 were walking into the Mathey dining hall for dinner. Whitman was talking about one of his friends — Hersh Davis-Nitzberg '99 — who wanted to build a library in the village of Komenda, Ghana, where he had spent the previous summer.

"You want to go to Africa?" Whitman asked.

"Yes," Nyberg replied. "Let's do it."

That conversation proved to be the starting point of an endeavor larger than either had imagined.

"We realized there were so many things we could do," Nyberg said of their trip to Komenda the following summer, during which they helped establish the Komenda Community Library. "We felt a moral obligation of some kind."

Whitman and Nyberg are now the chief executive officer and chief operations officer, respectively, of the Ghana Education Project — a national nonprofit organization dedicated to providing youth in Ghana with educational resources that will allow them to pursue both higher levels of education and higher standards of living.

Initially a Princeton student organization, GEP — which has a board of directors composed entirely of Princeton students — was awarded national nonprofit status last summer. The organization's members are now working to form chapters in universities and colleges across the country, each of which will work with one target district in Ghana.

"Our motto is: Education is the foundation of personal and communal freedom," Nyberg said.

So far, GEP has sent 22 students to Ghana to build libraries, teach English classes and prepare students for college entrance exams, he said.

In addition to providing education resources, GEP works to increase AIDS awareness.

"Education efforts are heavily undermined [by the AIDS epidemic]," Nyberg said.

The national AIDS infection rate in Ghana is 3.6 percent, he said. But he added that among youth, the infection rate is between 15 and 30 percent.

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"It's basically hitting school kids, but it's also hitting teachers," Nyberg said. "We want to make sure kids are healthy, so they are able to go to school."

The organization's AIDS awareness program incorporates village speeches, teacher conferences, radio programs and a play to be written and performed by youth in Ghana.

Nyberg said GEP's main goal is to help students empower themselves. "There's a cultural legacy of Westerners going to Africa with a kind of agenda. A lot of that, it's generous, but it's not culturally sensitive," he said.

Whitman, who spent last summer in Ghana laying the groundwork for GEP's future projects, said his favorite moment was when a local chief took him out for a drink.

"He sat me down, looked me right in the eye, and said, 'I really believe in what you've been doing.' "