Dora’s lifelong dream: more schools in Ghana
Hamilton entrepreneur jumps in to help, with money, time and labour
Whenever a school closes in Hamilton, Dora Anie just wants to say, “Can I take that building and put it on a ship?”
The ship would go to Ghana, where she was born and grew up, where schools are so critically needed.
“Ghanaian parents will stop eating to put money to a school,” says Dora, who founded Ghana Schools of Dreams 10 years ago.
She knows. Dora’s charity has helped build one school there and is almost finished another. The first one cost $27,000 and the next one will have cost about $40,000.
Though you can’t put a building on a ship, you can put a young man on a plane. Actually, Aaron Fierling put himself on the plane. He is highly self-motivating, but Dora really touched something in the 23-yearold entrepreneur. And all by chance.
Three years ago, he and his brother Matt, 22, started up their second restaurant, The Pita Factory on Mall Road in Hamilton. It’s been very successful. They have another in Milton. They’re fourth generation entrepreneurs.
Like Dora, Aaron is an immigrant to Hamilton — OK, he came from Kitchener. But still.
When he and Matt moved here in 2011 to get The Pita Factory going, they rented the basement of a house owned jointly by Dora’s daughters, Barbara and Ann Marie. The sisters are highly motivated young women in their own right, a teacher and a TV producer.
“Mom,” said Ann Marie one day, “you have to meet these two (Aaron and Matt). There’s something about them. They’re like Barb and I.”
So Dora met them, and got talking to Aaron about Ghana Schools of Dreams. Dora didn’t think much more about it. Then she got a call. Aaron. He didn’t just want to help with the charity, he wanted to join the board.
But it went further; Aaron doesn’t do anything without throwing himself into it with all his energy. When Dora mentioned she was going to Akuffukrom, Ghana, to break ground on a new school, Aaron told her he was going, too.
Dora shows me pictures. Aaron digging, lifting, toiling under the hot October sun in Ghana. Raising a school.
“This was the first time a board member actually went over,” she says.
Aaron and his brother work long days at the restaurant, up early, closing late. Giving up scarce vacation time for 19 days of physical labour, that’s a sacrifice indeed. Aaron doesn’t see it that way. “Africa has always been a dream of mine … and it was awesome. We got so much done.”
Aaron’s father Jim Fierling, who owns Stratford Home Furniture in Stratford, Ont., went with him to Ghana and helped build.
“He came because he was afraid if I went alone, I’d never come back,” Aaron jokes. “Or that I’d bring back a wife.”
For Dora, building schools in Ghana is a lifelong passion. She grew up relatively privileged in the village of Mepom but saw all around her the near insurmountable struggle of villagers trying to keep children i n school. That’s where the first school was built.
Of her Grade 8 class, only Dora went to high school.
She came to Canada in 1973, settling ultimately in Hamilton. But she returned often to her homeland, saddened to see the foreshortening of education, the girls having babies young, too many boys taking to drink. In 2004, she kept a promise to herself. To help.
Hence the Ghana Schools of Dreams. More schools to come.
Aaron just got an update — only the roof left to finish.