CHIEF ESTABLISHES FOUNDATIION TO AID COMMUNITIES (PAGE 23, JAN 10)

APRAPONSO, Bomba and School Junction are three deprived farming communities in the Mpohor Wassa East District in the Western Region.
People in these communities, who are predominantly cocoa, citrus, vegetables, oil palm, as well as subsistence farmers, lack many social amenities and infrastructural facilities which may help to improve their living conditions.
The settlements are deprived of a good road network, schools, electricity, places of convenience, potable water, good sanitation and health facilities.
It is against this backdrop that the Chief of Apraponso, Nana Ekua Bri II, under whose traditional authority the three communities fall, established the Nana Ekua Bri II Foundation, a non-governmental organisation based in Denmark, to spearhead the meaningful and rapid socio-economic development of the communities.
The foundation will ensure the construction of schools, roads, good houses, places of convenience, as well as the provision of potable water, health and sanitation facilities in the communities.
Since its establishment four years ago, the foundation has been providing assorted items, including tables, chairs, hospital beds, computers and their accessories, sewing machines, bicycles and wheelchairs, not for only the three communities but also schools, health facilities and other institutions outside the settlements.
In collaboration with the Mpohor Wassa East District Assembly and with the assistance of Rotary Denmark, it has constructed three boreholes fitted with pumps for the people of Apraponso, Bomba and School Junction at the cost of GH¢156,000.
Early this year, it shipped a 40-footer container with 80 school tables and 160 chairs, 200 bicycles, 15 wheelchairs, 20 boxes of children’s T-shirts, six boxes of reading books, six plastic bags of cloths, one box of carpentry tools, 37 sewing machines, 40 computers and accessories, 30 plastic bags of clothes for schoolchildren, among many others, all worth GH¢50,000.
Nana Bri, who is resident in Denmark and is also the Chairman of the foundation, told the Daily Graphic that 20 sewing machines had been donated to the Department of Social Welfare to be given to the Essipun Rehabilitation Centre in the Sekondi/Takoradi metropolis.
She said some computers had also been donated to the Saint John School in the metropolis, while a computer had been given to the Kojokrom Police Station.
Nana Bri said the library books would be given to the Bomba Junior High School and the Mpohor Senior High School.
She said the other items would be distributed among the people of the three communities, adding that the bicycles would be distributed among schoolchildren who trekked long distances to school.
According to her, the foundation would construct teachers quarters in the area to help attract qualified teachers to schools there, while a boarding house would be constructed for final-year students of a junior high school at School Junction to enable them to have ample time to study.