A Dollar for a Year of Education

Education undoubtedly opens up a world of opportunities for its recipients. This would be the case in New Guinea, if circumstances such as poverty did not make the educational rate astoundingly low. With the average amount of time spent at school being 2.9 years, there is a need for a sustainable means of providing access to education. John Taka, a Papua New Guinea native and a change agent, has come up with a dynamic solution to this problem, with the backing of Spark*.

Being the only university graduate from his village in Western Highland Papua New Guinea, Taka (who is a member of Price Waterhouse Cooper’s auditing team in his country), has first hand knowledge on the importance of education, which drove him to come up with the dynamic project Seeds of Hope. The idea behind the project for villages in Papua New Guinea to begin a sweet potato farm use the produce hone into the educational fees of the children in the village.

Spark*, true to its ethos of assisting in the provision of local solutions, is assisting Taka in providing a sustainable solution to the lack of access to education. Through this coalition, the project has already been successfully carried out in Taka’s village, sending 15 members of his community to school and thus showing its potential for viability in other communities in Papua New Guinea.

The next step is to get the project into four more villages, with Spark* contributing one third of the start up costs using the funds raised through StartSomeGood. Reaching the tipping goal of $2,500 will assist John in scaling the project into 3 more communities and $5,000 will help him to scale it into five communities.

With 12 days to go, the tipping point goal is just within reach, with $2,053 already pledged. Do you want to help change Papua New Guinea communities through education? Let’s get this campaign past its tipping point! You can help by pledging a dollar for every year you have spent in education or just by simply sharing this campaign with your friends.

Asibi Danjuma

I am a 23-year-old Londoner currently in law school. I have a BA in Politics and International Relations and an LLB in law. I have worked as a Student Facilitator for the British Red Cross, taught at local schools in Berkshire and have done a lot of pro bono legal research for Amnesty International and the Arizona Capital Trials Project. When I finish law school, I hope to start saving the world by working in developmental research and perhaps move to Paris to eat macaroons, dabble in photography and write stories. I’m also an avid reader, white wine drinker and world traveler.