Thornhill students work to improve living conditions in African slum

By Kim Zarzour
Gifts will be flying through the sky this Christmas, but they won’t be toys and they won’t be in a sleigh.

The “gifts” will be two Jewish students from Thornhill; their sleigh: cheap seats on an overseas plane.

The timing of the flight, Dec. 25, is mostly coincidence. Flights to Ghana are less expensive on Christmas Day, and that worked for Michael Kapps and Adam Khan. The university students don’t have a lot of money and they’re trying to save the world on a shoestring.

Mr. Kapps and Mr. Khan are heading to West Africa bearing gifts, they hope, of good health.

It will be the fruit of about two years of work, and the start of what they hope will be an expanding multi-tiered health campaign to help slum villages in Ghana.

It all started the summer of 2007 when the students, and classmate Nicole Gileadi, graduated from Thornhill Secondary School. The three friends were to head in separate directions in the fall – Mr. Kapps to Harvard, Mr. Khan to Wilfred Laurier, and Ms Gileadi to McGill. But first, Mr. Kapps, contemplating a career in medicine, signed on for a medical internship in Ghana.

It was an eye-opening experience and he learned much, but most enlightening was his own bout with malaria.

He’d taken all the precautions, but the infected mosquito got him anyway. The parasite wormed its way into his blood, and within about two weeks he was flat on his back with what felt like a really bad case of the flu: fever, spasms and chills, shivering in the tropical heat.

Malaria is rampant in Ghana, the leading cause of death for those under 5, but for the 18-year-old it was just a nasty memory: he was able to get quick access to medication and was back on his feet in no time.

For many Africans, however, it’s not so easy to get the inexpensive drugs. Many die.

Mr. Kapps thought that wasn’t fair and decided to do something about it.

While interning, he’d met local community leaders in Ghana’s central region who were eager to improve the area’s living conditions. Mr. Kapps offered to help, figuring his connections to Harvard, and his friends’ connections to McGill and Wilfred Laurier universities, would be of value.

“We weren’t entirely sure we could do something,” he recalls. “We were just out of high school and didn’t know anything about setting up an NGO (a non-governmental organization),” but his Thornhill friends and two Harvard roommates – from Cuba and India – were keen to try.

Back home again, he and the other students set up a non-profit organization, the Ahoto Partnership for Ghana, using the Ghanaian term for “freedom from suffering”.

Soliciting help from their university’s statistics department and public health professors, they designed a 50-question survey to be distributed by their Ghana partners to 150 families in the village.

The data they uncovered was revealing: a gap existed between what the residents knew about health and what they were doing. The locals knew malaria was a big problem, but weren’t doing much to prevent it. They did not know about water-born disease or the benefits of boiling water, and they felt ignored by other NGOs and the Ghana government.

The students realized any solution would have to rely on the villagers’ own initiative.

“A lot of NGOs go in all gung-ho, thinking they’re going to solve all the problems and don’t consult with the community itself,” says Mr. Kapps, now in his third year in economics at Harvard.

By their sophomore year, the six university students in North America and their partners in Ghana, who’d formed their own local group called the Free Foundation, had put together plans for a small three-day health camp in Akotokyir, a village of about 5,000. They brought in local medical workers who ended up diagnosing and treating hundreds of slum residents.

“It was incredible,” Mr. Kapps remembers. “We were able to catch dozens of cases of preventable diseases like typhoid and gangrene.” And the best part of all: it only cost $300 which the students paid for themselves.

Buoyed by this success, they developed a unique, three-pronged initiative. They’d target slums, of which there are several in Ghana, and they’d focus on the area’s main concerns. Mr. Kapps and Mr. Kahn would travel over the school holiday break to Ghana (Ms Gileadi hopes to visit this summer) to accomplish three things.

Distribute and help install insecticide-treated mosquito nets to high-risk groups, such as families with young children.

Register villagers for Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme, which is free to pregnant women and children under three.

Work with local educators to improve health education in schools.

The students enlisted the leadership club at their alma mater, Thornhill Secondary School, to help raise money to purchase 500 of the $5 mosquito nets. According to Ahoto’s survey, less than a third of the population in Akotokyir own nets. By distributing, installing and promoting the correct use of malaria nets, they expect to reduce the number of reported cases by 50 per cent.

Over the next few weeks, the volunteers will go door-to-door, helping families set up nets and working with the locals to sustain efforts to improve health.

The group hopes that the real “gift” to Ghana will be empowerment – long-term solutions that the community can sustain on its own.

Their next projects include creating sustainable business in the region to provide clean water and setting up a temporary children’s health clinic.

“They are capable of solving the problems themselves,” says Mr. Kapps. “They just sometimes need someone to help them organize, to connect the dots, maybe some basic financial support for transporting people there and providing some drugs.”

That’s what Ahoto does, he says, and Akotokyir is just the beginning. More than 15 communities within a five-mile radius of Akotokyir face similar problems; the group hopes to eventually extend best practices to the surrounding area.

The Thornhill students, all aged 20, admit they’re young for such grand goals, but believe youth is an advantage.

“We’ve got links to experts and resources at universities and an ability to reach a wide audience,” says Mr. Khan, who is studying business administration. At an evening course at York University, for example, his professor offered as a dare to sing for the class if Mr. Khan managed to raise $200 on campus for Ahoto, which he did. “I would have to go to class anyway,” he says. “Might as well raise $200.”

The students have gathered a team of campus-based volunteers and hope to use their position at North American universities – innovation centres for public health, medicine, technology, leadership and social entrepreneurship – to bring ideas and people together.

“We’ve been accomplishing a lot with very little,” says Mr. Kapps.

In fact, Ahoto has virtually no overhead. Most communication and planning is done through Skype and e-mail, and the students pay for their overseas trips themselves. Every donation goes directly to projects in Akotokyir. The group also hopes to establish a volunteer program through Thornhill Secondary School to allow students to make the trip this summer.

“We’re born into excellent opportunity over here, just by luck of the draw,” says Mr. Kahn. “We entered into a pretty good deal and I think it’s our responsibility to spread around what you have, to share your luck with other people.”

Besides, adds Mr. Kapps, working with friends is fun. He and Mr. Kahn have been buddies since Grade 4.

“Who knew a bunch of high school kids in Thornhill could help people across the world in Ghana?”

For more information or to make a donation, visit www.ahotopartnership.org