Pencils of Promise (PoP), an education-focused Non-Governmental Organisation and the Marie Vivian Dogbe Foundation have teamed up to provide the Avegorme Community in the South Tongu Constituency of the Volta Region with a 3-unit classroom block, an office, a storeroom and a 6-unit toilet facility.

At a ceremony at Avegorme on Tuesday, representatives of the Marie Vivian Dogbe Foundation confirmed that the Foundation has taken up the responsibility of supplying all the building materials the community is required to provide for the project.

Under PoP projects, beneficiary communities are required to foot about 20% of the project cost with PoP providing the remaining 80%. The Marie Vivian Dogbe Foundation is relieving the Avegorme community of this burden to ensure the project is speedily and successfully completed.

The partnership between PoP and the Marie Vivian Dogbe Foundation in Avegorme follows an intervention by Stan Dogbe, Special Assistant to former President John Mahama & a native of South Tongu, and Hon. Kobby Woyome, the Member of Parliament for the area, when reports of the deplorable state of the Avegorme DA Basic School came to the fore.

Speaking at the ceremony to announce the package, Country Director of PoP, Freeman Gobah encouraged the Community to form a project management committee and mobilise the people to provide communal labour for the construction of the classrooms.

Hon. Woyome, who announced the Marie Vivian Dogbe Foundation’s offer to provide the needed materials, also urged the Community to dutifully support the project with their communal labour. The MP explained that the Foundation was founded in honour of the late Marie Vivian Dogbe (nee Woyome) who was the mother of Stan, Woelinam and Sefakor Dogbe; and was the wife of the Awadada of the Agave Traditional Area, Togbe Kowu Adzove XI.

Pencils of Promise has been operating in Ghana since 2012 and has funded educational projects in the Volta, Oti and Eastern Regions. PoP builds clean and safe schools in rural and developing countries with the aim of increasing access to quality primary education.

The Avegorme DA Basic School project is expected to be completed in four months.