Diaspora News of Monday, 30 August 2010

Source: stephen a. quaye,

Ghanaians Achieving Academic Lauretes In Diasporas

From: Stephen A. Quaye, Toronto-Canada.

More Ghanaians living in diasporas have been achieving academic laureates in various fields which are worth recommending and emulating to others especially the youth that education is key.

From the professional field of medicine, chemical engineering, journalism, arts, law, accounting, telecommunication and security, it could be reported that many Ghanaians are spread all over studying to acquire professional skills to create employment and wealth for themselves and their families.

The list of Ghanaian students is a tall one but one of them who has successful achieve excellence is Dr. Elvin Baffour Frimpong-Manso, who took a 15 years medical sciences-human anatomy, chemistry, physics and has graduated to become a doctor of chiropractic. As to why the 29 year old doctor took such a course he said, he wanted to have a vivid insight as to how the human body works as a complex organism that must work in unison to produce even simple tasks like speaking and thinking simultaneously.

Dr.Elvin Frimpong Manso, said whiles in the university of Oklahoma and Michigan both on full track and field scholarships, he became fascinated with the human body’s internal complexities and wanted to discover how to use it to heal.

Accordingly, it is true that the youth do not want to go to school and statistics can show that as there are many to blame. The government and public institutions have made it increasingly costly to attend schools of higher learning.

“It is an incredible deterrent when you want to become a lawyer and they say it costs 800,000 dollars or an engineer and they say tuition is 60,000 dollars .That is one aspect where the government can assist society further by simply making tuition costs affordable.

“Secondary, the parents of the youth has an enormous role in their children’s future. Instead of limiting a child or teenagers aspirations, facilitate them with support and encouragement since no child was born knowing what to do. They have gifts but it is for the parents to not only discover them, but facilitate it for the world to see” he pontificated.

The Chiropractic doctor observed that the children of today needs a wake up call because it is not cool being a gangster but it is cool being rich, powerful, respected and mostly being educated since fast life can be achieved legally too.

Telling his story to encourage others Dr. Frimpong Manso, denied ever being the first to achieve this status and would not be the last so if he can do it any other person can do it as they all come down to what they want [priorities].

He further observed that Ghanaians have an incredible amount of pride that is why they dominate many of the things they do. That same attitude that gave them the power to become the beacon of African’s independence and it is the same attitude they need to exhibit everyday. Until then they will just continue to blend in, not stand out.

The superintendent minister in charge of the Ghana Methodist Church in Toronto Very Rev. Jacob William French, reading the portfolio of Dr. Frimpong Manso described the achievement said he was very proud of him to have gone through fifteen years in dedication to studies stages to become a full practitioner.

He also said it is also serving as inspiration to the young ones in the church as they use to talk about the negatives but thank God they are seeing the positives of what the youth in the Ghanaian community to achieve to become the great leaders in the future.