While we continue to appreciate our BwB volunteers throughout Pro Bono Week, we wanted to highlight a recent engagement we had involving university students. In the spring of 2016, Bankers without Borders deployed 4 graduate students from Vanderbilt University (Kevin Kelly, Eileen Remley, Emily K. Sheldon, and Sid Raghuraman) to work closely with GhScientific, an organization based in Accra, Ghana, that serves as a hub for people interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM).
The volunteer consultants were brought in to help GhScientific think through its sustainability model, identify new revenue streams and develop a model to scale up. While in Accra, the volunteers met with various organizations and stakeholders, hosted several strategy sessions and provided a scale up model with a roll-out plan for implementation.
Emily Sheldon, one of the volunteers on the project, had a great volunteering experience, and noted that the engagement: “helped expand my work experience in sub-Saharan Africa, introduced me to new partners and projects, and was the catalyst in my moving to Accra soon after graduation. The BwB experience made a huge difference in my career path.” Another volunteer, Kevin Kelly, noted that the greatest lesson for him was that: “The volunteer project helped me recognize the most effective role I could play in the movement to end global poverty. I've come to understand the need for partnerships with local organizations and community members to promote sustainable development.”
When asked about impact, Thomas Tagoe, Co-Founder and COO of GhScientific noted: “As a growing organization, we needed all the expertise we could get to drive our vision forward. The work from the Vanderbilt team will help us scale-up while streamlining our efforts, taking into account the unique climate that Ghanaian social enterprises operate in.”
A BIG SHOUT OUT TO THE VANDERBILT TEAM!!! We look forward to deploying more teams in the future!