I was privileged to participate in the opening of the Ghanaian SDA Church Community Computer Lab on Sunday, June 10, 2007. This church of 231 members is situated in Malton, Ontario, a neighbourhood to the northwest of Mississauga with a population of over 40,000 people. The Ghanaian church is one of two churches occupying the same building, with the other church being the Malton Seventh-day Adventist church.

There were several important guests in attendance including Mark Babiy, Vice-Principal of Brookview Middle School, where Pastor Damson Oppong and volunteers from his church conduct a tutoring program with a teacher at the school, Joe Kingsley Eyiah who is also a Ghanaian Adventist/Chair of the Education Council of the two Ghanaian SDA Churches in Toronto as program organisor.

I was impressed with the brief reports given about the work of the Ghanaian church in reaching out to help Black youth in the community to become more focused and productive students in school. We heard reports that students who have been attending the tutorial program have made such remarkable progress that Vice-Principal Babiy asked Pastor Damson and his team what magical food they had been feeding the students to transform them from reluctant learners into focused and productive learners. Vice-Principal Babiy applauded the efforts of the church, and pledged his continued support to the program.

Pastor Andrew King, a co-sponsor of the community computer lab, gave a brief address in which he emphasized the need to have more community programs in order to save our young men from getting into a life of drugs and crime.

Representing the SDACC as Director of Education, I gave the feature address emphasizing the ministry of Jesus Christ in reaching out to the community to transform the lives of men and women, giving them hope and purpose. In like manner, the church should be engaged in the business of mending broken lives, helping people to find meaning and purpose in life. I congratulated the Ghanaian church for engaging in community outreach programs to make a positive difference in the lives of young people.

We applaud the Ghanaian church for taking the initiative to reach out into the community with viable and much needed educational programs, but we must also thank Pastor Andrew King, pastor of the Malton Seventh-day Adventist church, for making it possible to get government funding for the community computer lab project through his involvement with the African Canadian Christian Network (ACCN). The church needs to join hands with the neighbourhood school to help develop our boys and girls into responsible, contributing citizens of whom we can be proud.