Since our fundraising campaign ended several months ago, a lot progress has been made towards the completion of VAM Girls Academy!  Your donation was critical for this progress to happen, and we would like to update you on the exciting work that has been done.

Your donation supported three students traveling to Ghana in June to work with our community partners and a local contractor who will be completing the bulk of the construction on the school.  With the help of our contractor, the students completed a comprehensive geological survey of the site and made some improvements on an existing building that is currently in disrepair.  In an effort to provide a school to the community as soon as possible, the team worked to create a renovation plan for the existing structure that will begin in September and make it safe for students to attend classes in that building while their new school is being constructed.  As soon as those renovations are complete, we will be moving on to the new construction designed by our team.  We will continue to work with both our local community professionals and our Ithaca professional partners at TetraTech, Inc. to be sure that as our design is constructed, it is safe, sustainable, and ready for many, many years of use in the future. We are so excited that things are moving ahead well! 

As we work forward, our team will always have each of you (our wonderful donors) in mind.  Without you, this would never be possible.  Thank you for your support, kindness, and enthusiasm for this project!  If you would like to continue to be updated on the students working in Ghana, check out VAM's blog at https://vamprograms.wixsite.com/summer2017-seg.

Two of the traveling students have shared some of their thoughts on working with our partners and the importance of being in Ghana, immersed in the community with hands on the ground:

"Spending time in the existing structure brought a level of understanding to the project that cant be found on CAD plans and Photoshop renderings. We were able to feel the way that shade and a light breeze can completely combat a hot and humid exterior environment to one that is cool and comfortable on the interior. With nothing but windows and open doorways, we were able to easily to work and write and take measurements in a comfortably well lit interior. We could see the structure in its barebones, the way materials similar to those we are working with will interact and connect and coexist. I was able to see our ideas, our hopeful and maybe far-fetched ideas of sustainable building, passive design, and a disregard for the standard or “status quo” of western building, manifest itself in what I would consider a success. I walked out of that country not hoping or believing that this can be done, but knowing that it can be done, and knowing that we can do it."

- Ben Ross, B.S. Engineering, 2018

"While at the site we met with two different contractors. We took them around, showing them the existing structure and Volta River which borders the property. We discussed with each contractor about their thoughts for renovating the structure. We also showed them our designs, drawings, and renders for the new building. They were impressed with our designs and the level of detail in our drawings, even though we considered our them incomplete. We asked both contractors to give us estimates for the cost of the renovation and new construction, and since one of the contractors had more experience building schools and innovative designs, VAM ended up choosing him."

- Alex Zink, B.S. Architecture, 2017

A huge thank you to each of our 111 donors for helping us raise $6,361 towards making this sustainable school designed by students possible!  From everyone who have worked on Sustainable Education Ghana, we could not be more grateful for your generous donations and are thrilled to continue moving this project forward with your support! 

We are very excited to continue working in Ghana this summer, and our first trip to Sogakope is leaving in mid-June.  Our traveling engineers and architects are hoping to set the necessary final pieces in place to begin construction in August, following the rainy season.  This has been an incredible journey and learning opportunity for each student who has played a role in bringing this school to life, and your donations are allowing those students to continue working closely with our community partners and start the process of breaking ground.

We continue to be blown away by the response to this project, and would like to invite anyone who is interested in involved or updated to meet with us on campus or follow our website at https://cusd.cornell.edu/seg/.

Thank you again for your awesome support!

Sincerely,

The Sustainable Education Ghana Team

Tomorrow marks the last day of the crowdfunding campaign, and we are so grateful that your donations have been able to raise over $6,000!  The campaign will be open until 12:00AM EST on May 10, 2017, so please continue to help us spread the word about Sustainable Education Ghana!

Over the last two years, SEG has grown from the initial hope that students would be able to help design a sustainable school to final preparations as we aim to start construction this summer.  We started with an initial site visit with our community partners in 2015 and followed up with research and a Human-Centered Design process to make sure that this school will serve the students, teachers, and administrators near Sogakope and fit their exact needs.  This has required many interviews, both in-person and over the phone, with members of the community and students in the other educational programs run by our community partners.  Using their insights, students on SEG were able to create a design that addressed various needs identified by the most important members of our team - those who will be using the school.  

Following our initial design, we entered into a testing period to ensure that the various systems we designed, from an array of solar panels to passive lighting throughout the different spaces, would function as intended.  We identified several changes, such as altering the orientation of the school to suit the dominant wind direction and taking out a cooling tower that was redundant and not cost effective.  We also were able to justify several of the sustainable systems used, such as the fact that every space except for the kitchen and computer lab can be used during the day without any energy consumption.  This testing culminated in six students heading back to Ghana with a design in hand to work with members of the community and several professional architects and engineers in Accra, Ghana and identify any further changes that needed to be made and gather any suggestions for the design.  

Finally, those students returned from Ghana with a lot of feedback and new ideas, which we quickly implemented in February and began preparing construction drawings and the final structural analysis with the help of TetraTech, a global engineering and design firm that works in international development.  We are currently wrapping up all of the work done over the past two years to make sure that everything is communicated clearly and effectively.  With the first trip out this summer, we will be working with our community partners to ensure that they have all the pieces in place to begin construction.  

Thank you for being part of this journey with us - we are incredibly humbled by your enthusiasm, advice, and willingness to help a group of college students use the skills they learn at Cornell and apply them outside the classroom.  Together, we will be able to help spread the joy of education and make it more accessible to a group of bright, enthusiastic young women in the Sogakope area.  We are grateful for your part in this project, and can't wait to bring it to life! 

Wow!  With 7 days left in the campaign, we have reached 110% of our goal of $5,000!  The generosity of everyone who has donated to this project so far has been astounding - we could not be more grateful for each and every one of your support along the way!  You have truly been able to bring a part of this school to life.

This is a large-scale project, which means we are still a long way from covering all costs of the school.  We are now working to reach a stretch goal of $10,000, and your donations have already brought us over halfway there!  We are hoping to spend the next 7 days continuing to spread the word, and provide all of you with more updates about the team and the school that you have supported.

Thank you again for your donations and continued support, this project would not be possible without you.  Together we are helping provide safer, more reliable education for students near Sogakope!

Thank you to everyone who has supported Sustainable Education Ghana so far!  You have already made such an impact in helping make sure that students can be in Ghana this summer for the start of construction.  We have already secured enough funds to cover lodging for two students for the entire implementation trip.  These students will be staying near the site in Sogakope, which will reduce transportation costs and allow us to build stronger bonds with community members who live near the school and will have daughters attending class there.  Thank you for your contributions!

This past week was a very busy one for members of SEG.  Last Thursday, we hosted an event called Bridging the Gap where we invited members of the Cornell and Ithaca community to provide feedback on the design for the school, see final drawings, and give advice as we move towards construction.

Additionally, students have been hard at work finishing up necessary drawings.  The design team has been busy converting all of our drawings from imperial to metric units and finishing wall sections that detail how water will be kept out of the classrooms when it rains.  The engineering team has been performing a final structural analysis of the super structure of the pavilion and north bathrooms, which are both part of the first phase of construction.  We have been working with 4 professional architects and engineers at TetraTech Inc. in Ithaca to ensure that our analysis meets British Building Standards used in Ghana.  We have also begun compiling 

In the next 20 days, we will be giving you updates on the many different things that SEG has been pushing towards.  Thank you for supporting our students as they work in architecture, engineering, sustainable energy, landscaping/urban planning, construction, and human-centered design.  We still have a long way to go with this campaign, but we know that together we can help students bring this building to life!