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Cargill donates 100,000 educational books to schools in Ghana

Cargill’s cocoa and chocolate business in Ghana is supporting a project with Books for Africa to deliver over 100,000 educational books to schools in Ghana.  

Cargill’s $77,250 (USD) donation will help promote literacy in the region and provide 27 local primary and secondary schools with much needed educational resources. The books – which have been collected, sorted, shipped and distributed through the organization Books for Africa – are predominantly textbooks and have been chosen specifically to support the local schools’ curriculums.

Cargill has also sponsored a new Law and Democracy library at the University of Ghana and as part of this project the university’s legal faculty will receive approximately 9,500 legal texts.

“We are extremely pleased to be supporting such a worthwhile project, providing key educational resources to schools in our local cocoa communities,” explained Kojo Amoo-Gottfried, Managing Director for Cargill Ghana.  “Most of the students at these local schools have only had limited access to textbooks before and so by partnering with Books for Africa we can take a few steps towards addressing this.” 

Pat Plonski, Executive Director, Books for Africa commented: “At Books for Africa, we believe that education is the great equalizer in the world, and books are at the foundation of a strong educational system. For many children in Africa, the gift of books truly is a gift of hope. Thank you to Cargill; it is company efforts such as this that enable us to continue our mission.”

The books will be distributed among the local schools in the Tema region with the help of employee volunteers from Cargill over the coming weeks. 

Amoo-Gottfried continued: “Our employees will have the opportunity to work with a local organization to help distribute the books to some of the schools, which will be a very humbling experience.”

Cargill has been operating in Ghana since 2008, when the company opened a state-of-the-art cocoa processing facility which employs over 200 people directly and many more indirectly. The company had been sourcing cocoa from Ghana for many years prior to establishing its operations and it has been involved in a number of projects to support local communities.

As part of the Cargill Sustainable Cocoa Program in 2010, Cargill announced a three-year $5 million (USD) commitment to support sustainable cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. This includes a partnership with CARE to sponsor a program of activities that will help improve the livelihoods of cocoa farmers and their families across 110 communities in the Ashanti, Brong Ahafo and Central regions of Ghana. In 2011, the company held a football week in Tema – in partnership with the Chelsea Foundation – to promote healthy lifestyles choices for children in the local Tema communities. In February 2012, the company launched an extensive four year commitment to farmer training in Ghana. 

This educational initiative is just one of the projects that Cargill globally supports to improve access to primary and secondary education for underprivileged children in Cargill communities.  Since 2008, the company worldwide has contributed more than $50 million (USD) to support schools and educational programs for people living in communities where we has a business presence. 

(Source: Cargill)

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13 April 2012