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Community Corner

SHS Students to Bring 300 Mosquito Nets to Ghana

Three graduating SHS students, along with english teacher Seth Evans and Afya Foundation founder Danielle Butin, will travel to Ghana for 10 days this month to help reduce malaria contraction in one of the capital's poorest neighborhoods.

Equipped with 300 mosquito nets, three Scarsdale High School seniors and their advisers will board a flight from JFK to Accra, Ghana next Friday.

Inevitably, the students will encounter a world very different than their own, but the students' advisers believe that to be a good thing.

"These are the experiences in a young person's life that help you to understand what you're made of," said Danielle Butin, an SHS alumnus and founder of the Yonkers-based Afya Foundation.

She explained that building inner-capacity can "only happen when you put yourself in uncomfortable, unfamiliar situations. The longer that you go to the same deli, the same place you see your friends every weekend, you don't grow, you don't stretch your capacity."

Seth Evans, an English teacher at SHS who has worked tirelessly to plan the trip, said that, while the primary goal is to help reduce the contraction of malaria, the effort has become about more than just helping to assemble mosquito netting.

"At first, I wanted to hang as many nets as possible, but I understand now that it's more about building a long-term cultural understanding. I expect to be challenged by the amount of difference we're going to encounter, but I hope the challenge will be a positive one," he said.

Evans said that the 10-day trip – which includes four days of volunteering and trips to Cape Coast, Accra's bustling market, and the University of Ghana – is the culmination of the students' desire to help and understand other people and their cultures.

"Each student is bringing with them something specific out of their area of interest," he said.

For instance, Brett Perl has solicited donated paints, brushes, and paper from local craft stores, and plans to create art with Ghanaian kids. Another student, Noah Ahles, is an avid soccer player who's conducted a soccer ball drive. He'll be giving them to students at the L&A Memorial Academy.

Casey Russo, who founded the Ghana Project last year, enjoys working with children. Back in January, she told Patch, "I'm definitely excited to meet firsthand the kids we are helping."

Butin, who has years of experience leading the Afya Foundation in sending medical supplies to developing countries, noted that getting the mosquito netting into the homes of Mallam, one of Accra's poorest neighborhoods, is only one part of a larger cultural landscape.

"My goal is to help kind of coach from the side. I want the students to see the thought processes that need to occur to really intervene," Butin said. "In all of our outreach in Africa and Haiti, there's a very different perception to health care than we have in the U.S."

Because many Ghanaians rely on traditional healers and only access modern health care when an ailment has taken a turn for the worse, Butin said that the students will need to look at cultural perceptions by "exploring what people know and understand about malaria."

Butin said she wants to help the students "to see the really big cultural umbrella that can make or break these interventions. The silent partner in intervention is learning how to become culturally sensitive to the needs of a population."

While all three students going on the trip will be leaving Scarsdale to attend college in the fall, they'll undoubtedly take their memories of their trip to Ghana with them. Evans said he hopes the students' success on this year's trip will inspire other kids to participate and to garner community support for future trips.

"This is an ongoing initiative, and we very much want to build momentum for next year's trip," he explained. "Next year, we will add to the net-hanging by raising money to ship a container of donated medical supplies through the Afya Foundation to the health clinic and hospital associated with our sister school in Accra."

Evans said, "so many people are stepping up and becoming a part of the project. We hoped for that to happen because we want the project to be something that sustains itself and over time becomes an agent of change."

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