1 IU student here helps many more students in Africa

If education leads to a more advanced society, organizations such as One Here, One There are helping to create a better Africa from halfway around the world.

The student group, which focuses on raising funds to help support education in sub-Saharan Africa, will present an art show fundraiser Saturday at Upland Brewing Company.

“All the art is donated,” the group’s president-elect sophomore Carolyn Commons said. “We’ve literally got artists from all over the place.”

The approximately 30 contributors include friends of group members, professional artists and IU students, she said. The art is then available for auction at the event.

“We usually raise an average of $1,500,” Commons said.

While the monetary contributions are appreciated, Commons said the main purpose is more of a celebration, a time for people to have fun and show their support for the group’s cause.

Director of the African Studies Department Samuel Obeng, who was raised in Ghana, said that while supporting education in the region is important, groups such as One Here, One There must be careful about where the money goes.

For example, simply sending books overseas introduces problems such as whether they are in the correct language and, if so, whether their content is relevant to students in Africa.

Currently, the organization is focusing on purchasing laptops to send to Mmaweshi, Katane and Driehoek Primary Schools in South Africa, Commons said, to encourage learning that is based in critical thinking rather than rote memorization.

“It’s important that we know the problem and we know what they need.”
Obeng also said it is important to find people on the ground in the region who both care about the ordinary people to help avoid corruption and who know how to properly manage the funds to avoid waste.

“If there is not accountability, people can squander it with impunity,” he said, adding that the huge wealth disparity is often a problem when providing aid. “Many times, it is not the people who need it who really get it,” Obeng said.

Several group members, including Commons, traveled to South Africa last summer to visit their schools and the children they are working to help.

An account of their journey can be found online at www.2009iuohot.blogspot.com.
But the importance of the issue is not news to those who studied in Third World countries.

Akwasi B. Assensoh, a professor in the African-American and African Diaspora Studies Department, has traveled the world and studied topics such as this extensively.

He said that many African leaders received their educations abroad, later using what they had learned in their own countries.

“Education is important in many developing Third World areas. I know this for a fact,” Assensoh said in an e-mail. “In many African countries, one of the important mottos is: ‘Education has no end.’ Therefore, many citizens of Sub-Saharan African nations start to study when they are young and even when they are old, including the perennial or perpetual students that we encounter locally and overseas.”

One Here, One There art show
WHEN 8 to 11 p.m. Saturday
WHERE Upland Brewing Company, 350 W. 11th St.
MORE INFO Admission is free and open to all ages. Money raised will go toward buying laptops for schools in South Africa.