• April 30, 2023
  • Flight Unit
  • News

What does it mean to make a difference? As an organization, this is a powerful question that we ponder consistently. In answering this question, we constantly have to think about the impact we want to have on people’s lives and their communities. In answering both of these questions, one theme continues to emerge during our conversations: the ability to have a “ripple effect.” When we say ripple effect, we want to be able to support the growth of communities today, tomorrow and in the future to come. That said, our 2nd Annual Back to School Drive for Africa is designed to break the cycle of poverty. This simple but powerful frame of thought gave birth to our 1st Annual Back to School Drive for Africa.

As we all know, education is a game changer; it creates a pathway for the impossible to be possible. Education can be the spark of ingenuity or the lever that enables new dreams, thoughts & ideas to flow. Our Mission statement is: To cultivate strong leaders locally to create progressive change globally.  With this in mind, our focus is to immobilize the minds of our young leaders. Beyond providing educational supplies, we also wanted to share the concept that our organization is passionately rooted in, leadership. Combining these two things will help unlock tremendous potential, create opportunities for massive growth and advance societies. We want to ensure that we empower students with a greater understanding of what it means to be a leader and the importance of tapping into the power of believing in oneself.

Our 1st Back to School Drive began in April 2022 & by the end of January 2023, we had successfully executed our mission— to empower and enlighten young leaders so that they can start creating positive change. This project has had a few phases; Phrase 1) collect school supplies and donations from thoughtful and caring schools & donors. Phase 2) Pack & ship all educational supplies via boat container 3) Collect items from the port in Ghana. Phase 4) after arriving in Ghana, Accra from Toronto, travel 6 hours to remote Ghana. Phase 5) Distribute items to 25 school communities in different villages. We are now in Phase 6) Launching flightunit’s 1st Annual Student Essay Contest. Although this journey has taken some time & a direction of its own, it is truly amazing to be able to provide valuable resources & lessons to those in need in rural Ghana. In addition, we provided study utensils for each student and books to help bolster for their school libraries. We also let students know that they are loved and, most importantly, that anything is possible once you believe in yourself and push beyond your circumstances. 

During our journey, we saw underfunded school environments, experienced first-hand the daily struggles of students, educators and community members, and understood that this was just a tiny snapshot of everyday life for many people worldwide.

We want to bring about real change! By collectively challenging ourselves and our young leaders, we can start to distribute resources fairly and reduce inequality in our communities. We ask you to join us this year for an extraordinary campaign by donating today – any amount helps us reach our goal! Together let’s create actual positive change for those who need it most. Together we can make a bigger difference. 

Be sure to visit & support our gofundme page: https://gofund.me/130c6c82

Video recap: flightunit’s 1st Annual Back to School Drive for Africa

By Christoff Kyere