The Collaboration for IT and Communications Excellence, a Non-Profit Organisation has announced its new Executive Committee, board members and key staff members for its operations in Ghana.
The six-member executive committee comprises Mr Bruce A. Crawley (Philadelphia, PA), Board Chair; Dr Samuel Quartey, Board Vice-Chair; Karen Smith Woodson, Esq. (Atlanta, Georgia) Corporate Secretary; Patricia Marshall Harris (Philadelphia, PA), Executive Director and Treasurer; Manish Nambiar (Accra), Board Member; and Dzifa Gomashie (Accra), Board Member.
Board members and key staff members were also introduced to champion the provision of ICT-related educational assistance to Ghanaian students and entrepreneurs to become leaders in a tech-driven global economy.
The organisation, after a virtual inter-Continental conference, named Ghanaian and United States leaders to the board of the non-profit organisation.
The first of its kind, the inter-continental and organizational board meeting – via video conference, attracted groups of businesses, professionals, academic, civil and public-sector leaders from Northern and Southern Ghana, and across the USA to deliberate on strategic ways to help Ghana’s rural students to have access to ICT education.
The announcement, which was contained in a press statement issued by the organisation’s Administrator, Gladys Sandra Azure and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Tamale, said in a demonstration project in January 2020, that the organisation donated a fully functional computer lab, including 10 laptops and related equipment, 20 headphones and a 65-inch monitor to students of the Girls Model School in the Nabdam District of the Upper East Region of Ghana.
The statement said “Collaboration leaders upon realizing that usable desks that had previously been available to the general school population has been transferred into the computer lab, they then contributed 80 new metal combination desks to the school.”
While reiterating the organisation’s mission of helping Ghanaian students and entrepreneurs to become leaders in tech-driven global economy, the participants during the meeting reaffirmed their commitment with a formation of board committees and an outline of an ambitious schedule of first-year objectives originally launched in 2016 as the Pennsylvania – Incorporated African Bicycle Contribution Foundation.
In its new iteration, the statement said, the foundation has initiated a process for incorporation in Ghana.
“The IMF in 2019 named Ghana the fastest-growing economy in the world following the publication of a Ghana Country Report, “ICT in Education in Ghana,” in 2007, the Ministry of Education recognized that the future of Ghana’s economy would be directly dependent upon the ability of its basic-level students to adapt to new ICT curricula which is becoming foundational for facilitating the country’s ability to compete with tech-driven economies in Africa and worldwide” the statement said.
“Ghana further recognized that two primary resources would be indispensable to achieving its tech-related goals: a national availability of IT-certified classroom teachers, and student access to material resources, including computers, monitors, IT textbooks, power sources and internet connectivity” it continued.
Mr Bruce A. Crawley, Board Chair of the Collaboration, corroborating the Ghana Country Report authored by Kofi Mangesi, which identified some key inhibiting factors in access to ICT, said those challenges resonated perfectly with the objectives and diverse skill sets of the members of the foundation.
He said when the new Collaboration was formed, “we recognised that its mission would be best accomplished if we could generate full strategic cooperation between African and American leadership, in support of the Ministry of Education’s objectives.”
Dr Samuel Quartey, Vice-Chair of the Collaboration’s Board, called for strengthened collaboration saying the board has worked diligently to create the new partnership with an agenda designed to speed up the delivery of critically important IT skills to under-resourced rural Ghanaian students and young entrepreneurs.
