Local nonprofit Kids Prosper Kids is ready to break ground on a vocational school in Ghana West Africa as soon the funds come in. Nearly three years after a fifth-grade class in Prosper ISD started this project, the land has been purchased, blueprints drawn, and permission has been granted by the chief of the area for the building of Prosper Life Career Institute in Kumasi, Ghana.
“We can literally build whenever we have the money,” Kids Prosper Kids co-founder Kimberli Brackett said. “There’s nothing else we’re waiting on.”
Fundraising for the current stage of the project started on November 27, 2019 when Brackett kicked off the Squares for Square Feet campaign while she was visiting Ghana over Thanksgiving break. The campaign will end on KPK’s third birthday in January.
This project started in 2017 when a group of fifth graders at Cockrell Elementary caught a passion for changing lives across the world. Brackett, then their fifth-grade math teacher, shared about her experiences rescuing kids from trafficking in Ghana, and they couldn’t sit back and do nothing. Now their dream of building a school across the globe is close to becoming a reality.
The plan for Prosper Life Career Institute is to create a place where Ghanaian youth can be equipped to successfully enter the workforce. Currently 64% of Ghanaian youth ages 15-24 are unemployed. The need for vocational schools has been recognized by the Ghanaian government as a necessary step in combatting unemployment.
“Prosper Life Vocational School (sic) in Ghana would have a great impact on the country and the Government of Ghana welcomes the project with much optimism,” said Hon. Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum Deputy Minister of Basic and Secondary Education, member of Ghana’s parliament, and KPK Global board member in an open letter written in support of PLCI.
In order to build the school, Kids Prosper Kids needs to raise $1.5 million. This will cover everything from clearing the ground, to furnishing the buildings, to the first few years of teacher’s salaries. In its first year KPK raised $20,000 which they have used to purchase the land for PLCI in Ghana, pay for blueprints and financial estimates to be made and bless other schools which are already running in Ghana.
“I don't care if we build this million-and-a-half-dollar school,” Brackett said, “and only one child, one child in Africa gets educated and changes the poverty of his family. Was it worth it? 100% yes.”
Brackett goes on to explain that because of the community aspect of their culture empowering one individual in Ghana often translates to a whole family being lifted out of
poverty. Empowering families would be an important step in fighting human trafficking in the area because one child is often sold into slavery by their parents in order to keep food on the table for the rest of the family. According to a 2018 report by the US Department of State, human trafficking affects one in three families surveyed in the central and eastern portion of Ghana where this school will be built.
While building the Prosper Life Career Institute is the main focus of KPK, other focuses have come about as doors have opened locally.
“Our whole heart with even starting it,” says Brackett. “And with our logo was we're breaking chains of poverty in other countries, specifically for us Ghana, and that we're breaking chains of entitlement here."
Starting in fourth grade all the way up to senior year of high school, North Texas youth from Prosper to Denton and beyond can take part in community service and leadership training through KPK Local.
“KPK is really just an amazing organization,” says Heather Clay, president of KPK Local “that was created to give kids a way to lead and serve others really to empower them to help kids here, as well as globally, and really just empower the next generation to become servant leaders.”
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