This is quite delayed due to a lack of wifi, but this was the pupil teams’ reflection after the ASA/BC ‘Be the Change’ Day

After a long journey the previous day, we arrived at the African Science Academy in the outskirts of Accra. We were met by 23 of some of the most intelligent young women sought from across the continent to study A-levels in Maths, Further Maths and Physics in just one year.

The girls’ attitudes to life and education was inspiring: their intelligence, determination and motivation being almost alien to what you see in western culture. When engaging in discussion and debate one cannot help but admire and appreciate how the school promotes a strong sense of female empowerment and strength among its pupils, this is even more poignant especially when considering the gender-related prejudice that many of the girls have faced in their local communities.

After we were joined by the entrepreneur and female role model, Pippa Pepera, the girls proved to us how they are not only students that excel with respect to academics, they had the impetus and desire to use their capabilities to change the features of society which often provided a blockade to their journey, so that future aspiring females of the continent further their accomplishments. We were also advised not to judge situations too quickly, and to ensure that we understood the context of a community before acting.

In particular, it was hugely inspiring that the students at the school were not just educated to become successful and hopefully wealthy, but the students were schooled in a way also to become tools to change and further improve their society, and to continue and maintain the achievements being made in solving inequality in Ghanaian society today. Tying in well with the task of discussing methods to combat modern day problems, this lead us to coin the slogan of “Be the Change”.

This video documents the pupils’ response to the task set: