In the summer of 2012, 150 members of the Yale Alumni Service Corps (YASC) visited the village of Yamoransa located along the Cape Coast in Ghana for ten days of volunteer work. Some of the volunteers worked alongside local workers on the initial stages of a new two-story building designed to house an Information, Communications and Technology Center (ICT) as well as to serve as a forum for other community activities.
YASC returned to Yamoransa in 2013, 2014 and finally in 2016. In the following years the ICT Center project evolved from its original vision into what has become the flagship project of the Yamoransa Model for Sustainable Development.
Deborah Rose, President of the Helping Africa Foundation, and a member of the original YASC group, took the initiative to meet with Kafui Prebbie, the CEO of TECHAiDE, who had refined a device called Asanka (Ghanaian for community bowl).
The Asanka Device connects offline learners to local content. Deborah and Helping Africa Foundation Executive Director, Japhet Aryiku decided to partner with Kafui and TECHAiDE and to fund the installation of 52 specially designed HP monitors that would be connected to ASANKA devices that had been pre-loaded with the Ghanaian junior high school curriculum.
The Center was dedicated on August 13 of 2016 in a ceremony featuring the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana, Robert P Jackson, members of the YASC including Mark Dollhopf, Deborah Rose as well as Japhet Aryiku Executive Director of the Helping Africa Foundation, Kafui Prebbie, CEO of TECHAiDE and IMPLEMENTERS, Chief Nana Akwa II, Professor Kofie Awusabo-Asare and Comfort Garbrah, one of the few women representatives to the Assembly.
As the Yamoransa Model kept evolving, it became apparent that the flagship needed an upgrade, including a 100-seat conference room for events and workshops, a Home Economics Center with catering and sewing facilities, and finally a Makerspace with robotics equipment, 3D printing and augmented/virtual reality learning facilities.
Today, almost 2,000 students from 8 schools rotate through the center on a monthly basis to learn computer skills.
Other Lab Projects
