Giving Ghana girls a future
Ex-GPhelpslocalpupilsdotheirbit
Primary school pupils have been helping improve the lives and prospects of girls in Ghana with the help of a retired Stirling doctor.
Dr Mary Higgins, who spent 20 years as a GP with Allan Park Practice, has made frequent visits to Let Us Shine Girls’ Academy in the country, and is preparing to make her 10th trip early in 2018.
Let Us Shine is a Scottish charity founded by Fiona Mawuena, a young pharmacist from East Kilbride who had worked with Mary’s son, Paul, a paediatrician who became a trustee with the charity. The boarding school was founded in Kpandai, one of the most impoverished areas of Northern Ghana, in 2007, for girls who would not otherwise have had access to formal education.
It started with two classrooms, 60 pupils, two teachers, a house mother and a manager.
Now there are 200 girls in the school and it has scored in the top five per cent for Ghana in the national exams, and two of the students were in the top two per cent. A classroom at the school is dedicated to Mary’s late husband John, a retired paediatrician who worked at Stirling and Falkirk hospitals, who died in October 2008. Money raised at his funeral funded the classroom plus a sick bay named ‘Higgins Hut’.
And the charity has been assisted by children from St Mary’s Primary, Bannockburn, St Margaret’s Primary, Our Lady’s Primary in Stirling and St Patrick’s Primary, Denny.
They have sponsored girls at the Let Us Shine School and donated money for desks, bunk beds, mosquito nets, dining table and benches, and white boards for the classrooms. Each school also gave one of their own uniform tops to the girls that they sponsor.
Mary said: “The sponsorship sum of £20 per month maintains a pupil in school, pays for her clothing, boarding accommodation, school supplies, three hot meals each day and her ongoing health care.
“Let Us Shine has grown to cover education up to the final year of senior high school. It is financed purely by sponsorship and donations, the majority from Scotland.
Local ladies groups, churches, Brownies, Catenians, Rotarians, many individuals and Stirling Tesco have been generous in their financial support over the years and the charity is very grateful to them. When I visit at the beginning of the year I will continue to promote health education and malaria prevention during my time there and help out as necessary with the young pupils.”
For further details go to www. letusshine.org or write to Let Us Shine, 45, Randolph Rd, Stirling. FK8 2AP.