Alumni Profile: Kofi Amouzou (SCPS ’99)

June 2009

Kofi Amouzou (SCPS ’99), an international-student adviser at Columbia University, immigrated to America from Togo in 1995 to work on his master’s in tourism and travel management at NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. It wasn’t long after that Kofi moved into International House, a student residence hall on the Upper West Side, and met his future wife Megan, who was the assistant director there. After Kofi moved out in 1998, he and Megan forged a relationship, and in 2000, they were married. “He says he left here in order to pursue me,” Megan jokes.

 

Megan was not the only thing that Kofi pursued after he left International House, where Megan is now director of admissions. The couple has a mission that is rather extraordinary. Since 2002, they have been developing a not-for-profit, grassroots effort to support and encourage education in Kofi’s native country and surrounding areas in West Africa. As a non-profit, their budgeting practices and their aid efforts are atypical; they have managed to eliminate much of the bureaucracy that can hinder foreign aid and are creating opportunities for children to gain an education through a practical, hands-on approach.

 

In 2002, Megan and Kofi visited his home in Lavié, a Togolese village of no more than 5,000 people. What began as a homecoming would soon evolve into the impetus for their current efforts. Megan recalls, “Kofi was showing me around the village, and I would see some kids going to school and some who weren’t. I asked myself why those kids weren’t in school, and Kofi said it was because their parents can’t afford to send them. So the next obvious question was, ‘well, how much does it cost?’”

 

At that time, the answer was surprising for the American tourist. For a year of school in Togo, the cost was the equivalent of between four and five US dollars, prices differing for boys and girls. “It’s difficult, coming from here, where certain things are taken for granted, basic education being one of them, to imagine not being able to read and write because of a few dollars – the price of a Starbuck’s cup of coffee,” Megan says. “I thought, ‘oh my gosh, we can get some people to give us money for these kids to go to school,’ and the idea just grew.”

 

When Kofi and Megan came back to New York, they decided they’d start saving money to help pay school fees for children in Lavié. A year later, Kofi returned to the village. They had raised enough money to pay the school fees for 45 children. They decided to get some friends involved, and before long, an official non-profit, The Children of Lavié, had been established.

 

One vital logistical issue that they affronted was how to deliver aid to Africa. “How do we get the money to them? I grew up there, and I know what the situation is. I know it’s not a lack of aid – money from other countries. It’s how the money is managed. We, the people who are raising the money, wouldn’t really know if those kids are getting the money.” So Kofi rather resourcefully decided to deliver the school fees to Africa himself. “I was comfortable with that idea because I could be certain that those people would actually get the money.”

 

The couple pays the expenses for Kofi’s trip, which lasts two to three weeks each October, and during which Kofi pays another year’s school fees for those he’s already helped and also finds new children to send to school. “The money that is given to us by our donors goes entirely toward the school fee. We buy the ticket out of our own pocket. We have somebody who’s working on the Web site for free. We take our own pictures,” Kofi says. “It’s important to me that the donors know that their money is going where we say it’s going.”

 

From its inception, the Children of Lavié has held the Masa Memorial Essay Contest, providing cash prizes for more than 20 students. “I thought it would motivate people to learn to write,” Kofi said of the contest, which is named for his mother. “She died in 2003, and we started the contest in her memory. I was very amazed at how she raised us. She sent us to school and did anything to pay our school fees. She was someone without whom I may not be where I am today. I tell people that it’s more than something close to my heart, or something that I discovered. It is my story.”

 

Kofi says that through helping children receive an education, he is making a small step toward bringing stability to an area historically plagued by conflict and political unrest. “I think education can be a solution for every single thing that is bad in the world,” he explained. “It helps you think. It helps you manage. It helps you think twice about things before you do them.”

 

As the funding grows, little by little, the operation grows, too. What began as an effort to help children in Kofi’s native village has expanded – first to surrounding villages and then to four different countries throughout West Africa. “Now, our plan is to cover the whole of West Africa. We’re not able to do that yet, but that’s where we’re trying to go.”

 

To date, Kofi’s charitable ventures have taken him to villages in Togo, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Benin – four countries lagging in education. A comparison of literacy rates of 205 countries ranks Togo 173rd at 60.9 percent; Senegal 197th at 40.2 percent; and Benin 201st at 34.7 percent. Burkina Faso comes in last, with a literacy rate of 21.8 percent.

 

The meager educational setting, which is typically an open space with a flimsy straw roof, is next on Kofi and Megan’s list of problems to be resolved. They’ve established a library fund to add library facilities to accompany village schools. Their $100,000 fund-raising goal seems high, but Kofi and Megan remain optimistic. “The problem is changing something that’s existed for too long,” he said. “When I went to school, there were no libraries whatsoever, and I don’t think it should be like that today.”

 

As they look to the future, Kofi and Megan think in terms of individual students, hoping to add slowly to the list of more than 3,000 they’ve helped so far. They act in small strides, but think and plan in big dreams. “It’s not a large operation to which people give thousands of dollars, but we want to be like that. Because I’m there, I know we can do a lot for a little money. We’ve been surprised about how small amounts of money can do things as great as we’ve done,” Kofi said. “Any place education becomes a luxury instead of a necessity, there is a problem that someone must fix.”