Foundation launches Community Service Awards

The Osei-Kusi Foundation (OKF), a community resource development organisation, has launched the third edition of its Community Service Awards (CSA) to encourage students of tertiary institutions to identify young people who are committed to use innovative community-based projects to transform the lives of individuals in their locality.

Under the programme, the students need to constitute themselves into teams with membership of between three to five per group, get a name, identify a deprived community in the country, and conduct a research focusing on developing the lives of young people in that community, as well as improve their living conditions.

 After two successful editions of the CSA programme, the foundation expects to receive applications from 30 groups for this year’s edition, out of which six groups with exciting ideas would be shortlisted and taken through a business training to gain invaluable leadership skills and experience.  

Feasibility of projects

After the various teams have made presentations at a ceremony to be held in June 17 this year to convince a panel of judges about the feasibility of their projects to have positive impact on the lives of the people, the group that demonstrates the most effective way of solving problems facing people in deprived communities will win GH¢10,000 as an award out of which GH¢7,000 would be used to implement the community project and GH¢3,000 for the participating winning team. 

Launching the 2016 edition of the CSA in Accra recently, attended by winners of last year’s award, Enactus from University of Ghana, the Executive President of OKF, Dr Kofi Osei-Kusi, said his organisation expected this year’s awards to be the biggest, and hinted of the introduction of a leadership component under the programme.

He said aside from equipping participants with business and entrepreneurial skills as had been the case with the previous awards, the group members in this year’s edition would have to acquire knowledge from some leadership books and explain their level of understanding of the concept of leadership. 

He explained that the new move was expected to go a long way to raise leaders to make positive contributions in the society, taking delight from the fact that students had already gained interest to contribute their quota for the betterment of society.

Appeal

Dr Osei-Kusi, therefore, appealed to other benevolent institutions to also invest in the CSA awards and help sponsor the teams that would emerge as first and second runners-up, to realise their dreams.

Enactus, narrating their experiences acquired from their ongoing project work, attested to the fact that their entrepreneurial skills had greatly improved. 

The Executive Director of the Head of State Award (HOSA) scheme, Mr Peter Annum, observed that the experience developed by people through volunteerism superseded what was taught in classrooms, saying it aided in creativity.

He said communication, collaboration, leadership and personal development were some of the skills acquired, pointing out that young people should make conscious efforts to learn in order to become better persons in the society.

According to him, the lack of such skills among graduates made them misfits in the working environment, thereby increasing the rate of graduate unemployment.

After throwing HOSA’s weight behind OKF’s vision, Mr Annum applauded the latter for helping the youth to have the continuous desire to identify a gap in the society and come up with social interventions. 

CSA first edition

The first edition of the CSA, held in 2014, saw a group of students from the Catholic University College emerging as winners and the group received GH¢9,000 to set up a bakery for unemployed young women at Nanketewa in the Brong Ahafo Region. Last year, a group of students from the University of Ghana, who emerged as winners, were awarded with GH¢10,000 to renovate the Occupational Therapy Unit of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital and train cured patients in bead making. 

Application forms can be accessed and downloaded from the foundation’s website (www.oseikusifoundation.org), and completed by April 30 2016.