Teach on the Beach, Ghana

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Welcome to Teach on the Beach

A collective of individuals who have invested in the future of a local community of African children. We want to sustain our good works by booking trips for adventurous people who are looking to give back. Guests will beach all day, teach in the afternoons, and experience the real Africa. Our goal is to purchase a beach resort and use the location and the business to support our after school programs.

Come celebrate Ghana on our first group trip by booking today!

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Why Ghana? In 2003 Alison and Aaron went to Ghana on study abroad. Feeling disappointed by the limited interaction with local cultures they sought out ways to involve themselves. Ali met two Ghanainas, Kwame and Fati, that had built a make shift classroom filled with books, pencils and a chalkboard. They were trying to create a space for additional learning to take place after school in their village. Ali brought Aaron along on visits to teach and interact with Kwame and Fati's friends, young and old. They met Henry, his twin Henrietta, Divine, William, and Ben during these visits and formed a friendship that has lasted till today.

Building a House Aaron's mother, Libby, recommended he try contacting Gisela Becker, who is a bit of a celebrity in their suburb of Birmingham, MI because of her work in Ghana, to see if they all can't work together. They did team up and with backing from the St. Paul Charitable Organization and a lot of hard work from Aaron and his lifelong friend Mike, they built a two story house for kids and volunteers in the village of Nkwantakese, just north of Kumasi. The two story house became the cool place to be in Nkwanta. Soon after its completion, it filled up with children eager and ready learn. This is when Aaron and Ali knew they may be on to something...

Developing an Approach What if we were to focus our energy on this community? What if we invited exceptional chidren in tough living situations to live with us and invested in their education and enrichment? What if we taught the kids that we sponsor to love learning and to learn from everything and then reward them with books, computers, and new games to play? Would other children think our kids were cool because they were smart and in turn, make them want to learn too? The answer turned out to be yes. And while we aren't changing the world yet, we are changing the communities we work in. With the success of Teach on the Beach, so spreads this change to more and more communities.

Becoming a Family Aaron and Ali's commitment and honest approach attracted many children, but more importantly it drew attention from travelers, volunteers, and teachers. Over the past six years, they have brought over 200 people to Ghana and helped each one to teach and make an impact in their own unique way. All these people have become one family bound together by their love for the children that have shown they want to and can learn. Our sponsored kids are world reknowned, near to the heart of volunteers from Europe and the US. Everyone is together in the picture to the right at Aaron's wedding to Rita, a Ghanaian school teacher. You can see yourself, our commitment to Ghana and our family is unwavering.

Moving to the Beach Eventually, our funding dried up. We needed a way to follow through on the goals we had set for these children: send them through to the highest level of education they can handle while continuing to build their critical and creative thinking skills so they can be influential agents of change in their country. Teach on the Beach is born. We moved from hot, landlocked Kumasi to Busua beach, the best in Ghana. In Busua, children literally go to school in the shadow of resorts that do nothing to help despite the money they make. We aim to change that by growing a sustainable organization that offers vacationers a way to enjoy the beach while making a difference.

Teach

The guiding principle behind our efforts is the continued educational advancement of the kids in our Program. Our approach to teaching and learning has been adapted and honed over our 7 years of work in Ghana. After failing to change school curriculums, we started to focus on after school programming to supplement and enhance our sponsored children's education. This snowballed into after school programming for entire communities and a mantra of 'Everything is a learning opportunity'. Ultimately, our approach is simple: reward those children who take the opportunity to learn.

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Beach

Teach on the Beach calls Busua beach in the Western Region of Ghana home. We also bring guests to two other notable beaches on the coast, Gomoa Fetteh and Elmina. By combing the coastline, we found the right combination of the most exotic, striking beaches and desperately underserved schools. Without both, the Teach on the Beach experience would not be quite so unique. This is an opportunity that brings your needs together with those of bright African children. Pretty awesome, right?

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Africa

In 1957, the republic of Ghana was led by Dr Kwame Nkrumah to obtain independence. The date is 6th March 1957 and Dr Kwame Nkrumah wanted Africa to be UNITED. It’s been 38 years now when he died and he did marvelous things for the republic of Ghana. He fought during colonialism and strived to capture independence from our colonial masters. During this period, there were set backs and he managed to deal with it politically, socially and economically.

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