This is a story of a community mobilising to solve their problem, rather than wait for government’s intervention which may take too long to come or never come at all.

The Anafobisi cluster of schools in the Bongo district of the Upper East Region, were without adequate furniture for pupils to use for lessons.

However, through community mobilisation, the Anafobiisi Primary and Junior High Schools A and B now have over 270 metal fabricated dual desks for use.

Until now, the pupils often had to sit or lie on their bellies on the bare classroom floors, to take down notes during lessons. Others improvised by bringing stones or bricks into the classrooms to sit on.

In Ghana, many schools confronted with a problem of this nature have to rely on community leaders to make constant appeals to the government and benevolent organizations or individuals and hope for a solution.

However, the people of the Anafobisi community decided to take the future of their young ones into their own hands – they came together, mobilised funds from among themselves and then with more support from benevolent individuals, constructed these metal dual desks for the schools.

At a ceremony to hand over the furniture to the schools, Deputy Finance Director at the Ghana Maritime Authority, Anthony Mba Ndoo who himself is a native of the Anafobisi community, said he was shocked when his niece told him each pupil had been told to bring their own table and chair to school because the school could not provide them.

Thinking that it would not be proper for him to buy a table and chair for his niece alone to sit in class, he decided to talk to friends when he returned to Accra and mobilise funds to buy furniture for the school.

“We had a donation of GHS30, 000 from Ghana Maritime Authority given to us by the then Director-General, Kwame Owusu”, he said.

Other natives of the area and old students of the Anafobisi School also contributed to the furniture which was constructed within the community.

Head of Cardiology at the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics at the University of Ghana, Dr. Joseph Atiah Akamah, also a native of Anafobisi also contributed funds for the furniture which has now been presented to the school.

He said education was the only way of transforming lives and communities – the reason behind the gesture.

The Chief of the Anafobisi Community, Naba Anyaneba Akolgo Saabo II said the furniture would help improve on the education of children in the community.

“This project is our commitment to blazing the trail of our forefathers and a sign of good character inherited from our fathers, who through the same zeal and spirit, established the school”, an elated Naba Saabo II said.

For the pupils of the Anafobisi cluster of schools, their days of sitting on bare floors for lessons were over and it was a happy moment for them.