St. Joseph’s Trust is based in the parish of St. Joseph’s, Bishop Thornton, North Yorkshire, UK.  Our aim is to support education in the rural Western Region of Ghana, primarily at St. Joseph Senior High School, Wiawso.  

We were introduced to this newly built school, which took in its first students in October 2008, by Father Augustine, a Ghanaian priest who comes from the Ashanti village of Asafo and who has covered for our parish priest over the last few summers. Due to our interest, we were invited to visit the school by Bishop Joseph Francis Kweku Essien, Bishop of Wiawso and by the Headteacher, Father Anthony Jones Mensah.  We visited the school during the period 13th March -20th March 2009.

We found the school to be a fine example of the local community helping themselves.  The school has been built under the direction of Bishop Essien, who was appointed Bishop of the newly formed diocese of Wiawso in 1999. Construction of the school started in 2005.  It is of a modern concrete construction and comprises of classrooms, dormitories, assembly hall, kitchen and staff bungalows.  In this inaugural year, there are about 90 boarding and day students, studying four subjects on the curriculum: English, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies.  Another four subjects will be added in 2009.  Courses followed are as required by the West African Examination Board.  Students have high aspirations with many aiming to go on to university and  having ambitions of becoming doctors, lawyers, politicians and journalists, to name just a few.

Unfortunately, in line with many schools in Ghana, the school has very few resources for either students or teachers. Classrooms have desks, chairs and a blackboard.  Teachers have access to one textbook per subject from which they teach and a packet of chalk for blackboard use.  The students have an exercise book per subject in which they take formal notes and a pen.  There is no other teaching resource or specialist classroom provision such as a science lab or Library.

Following our visit, we agreed to help support the school through the provision of teaching and learning resources and St, Joseph’s Trust was established.  As a Trust, we want to support the efforts of the community by providing essential resources by requesting, collecting and sending suitable equipment largely donated by British schools and businesses.  We will also raise funds through direct donation which will be used to fund major items.

Initially, we have agreed the following with the school:

· To raise money to provide and install a generator: in line with much of Ghana the electricity supply is intermittent with power cuts of varying length occurring on a daily basis.  The proposed generator will provide a consistent power supply thereby increasing the effectiveness of audio visual teaching and learning resources.

· To send out, on a regular basis, small but effective teaching and learning resources like text books, reading books and stationery.

· To send out volunteers to carryout school-based community projects.  Currently under discussion is the fitting out and development of  one of the classrooms as a library.

· To set up links between teachers and students of British and Ghanaian schools to the mutual benefit of teaching and learning in schools from both countries.

In the longer term, we would like to ship out a container of larger teaching, learning and administrative resources and to help with school staffing through a volunteer, secondment programme.

It is only with your help that we can fulfil these aims and we thank you in anticipation of your support.

The work of this trust is endorsed by  Bishop Arthur Roche, Bishop of Leeds, May 2009