Ghana
Name: Nana Adjoa Sifa Amponsah 
City: Accra
Country: Ghana
Email:adjoasifa@gmail.com
Birthday: May :21
Education: Bachelor of Arts
Occupation: Social Entrepreneur
Please describe your vision of a world that works for everyone.
The question I keep asking myself and other young people is that, if we all become doctors, lawyers, engineers and the like, how can we feed this world I therefore want to make farming attractive to the young women by starting from my country. I want to transform their mindset on farming by using myself as an example and giving them the relevant skills needed to be fashionable farmers.
A Ghana where the young woman embraces farming as a means to sustainable livelihood is my dream.
What do you see as the most pressing problems facing the world today?
I believe there are lot of pressing issues in the world and how you see things may very much depend on which side of the angle you stand at a particular point in time. For me the want of this world is the want of committed young people. Most of us are not committed to anything we do. We do things probably because we are forced to or the said thing to be done is attached with incentives.
Commitment to excellence, Commitment to time and even personal commitment are zero on the young generation’s priority list. Some people see commitment as an agreement or contract, others as a pledge or promise but I always love to define commitment as an attitude towards someone or something.
How do you feel these problems could best be solved?
Commitment is mostly assessed by the action or end results. You can only tell someone to commit himself or herself to a cause. It’s an intrinsic motivation before the external. But there can always be a way out.
What I think can be done is to start from the homes. Children learn best by what they see or examples and I believe parents are the first teachers of their children. And then to the schools. Most causes now are mainly on the shortcuts to be millionaires paying little or no attention to the moral and ethical values. The smartest get it all. So I believe if causes are channeled towards building certain values, it can help a great deal.
Profile
It was a Monday morning when Mr Adams, our class six teacher entered, we all stood to respond to his greeting as was the culture. Lessons began as usual. “A doctor, Engineer, lawyer were the chorus answers to his question, What is your dream job? As he walked towards me, he asked what about you Nana? An air hostess. Air hostess? He reiterated. Did I even know the job of an air hostess? No, I had only seen a picture of an air hostess in a book my grandfather bought for me and I felt I wanted to be like her because she was fashionable and classy.
As a child who didn’t get the opportunities my friends in the cities had, I made up my mind not to let the next generation be victims of circumstances, so I decided to come up with an initiative called the ‘pupils world’ with the aim of bridging the wide gap between rural and urban education which is currently running successfully with the help of my able team under my umbrella organisation DIF. Due to this project, I travel to many villages and this has helped me to know the basic need of human, food which is mostly produced from the farm. But the question is how do we provide this need when we all want white collar jobs.
One afternoon, I stood and watched foodstuffs being off loaded from a Kumasi (city)van in Nerebehi village where we went to do feasibility study on my project. The answer to my “why” brought childhood memories where most of my mates and I wanted nothing to do with the plagues of farming.
On our way back to Accra at about 11 pm, we witnessed a scene which was reported in the following morning’s newspapers. Apparently the young women we saw that night were arrested for transacting illegal business (Prostitution).To my amazement four of them were university graduates. Immediately I realised education alone could not do the trick as I linked it to the answer I got from the village “the youth especially the young women don’t want to farm so they go to Kumasi to make a living.”
Of course! man must survive but the how for me is the most important, so I decided to tackle the “how.”
In my search to acquire knowledge and skills to make generational impact, I came into contact with Kanthari, an organisation that provides incubator and springboard for social visionaries to transform concepts and conventions. During one of the sessions called concept transformation, I realised I could do more to bring social change in Ghana. With Ghandi’s quote in mind, I decided to be the change I want to see in the world by firstly, changing myself. I have farming experience through Saigramam and hope to get more experience through “Lend a Hand” and on Kanthari farms.
A Ghana where the young woman embraces farming as a means to sustainable livelihood is my dream.
Travelling, reading and cooking are my hobbies. I am always happy when people look at me and say, “because of you, Nana, I didn’t give up.”
Click Here To Read My Book Assessments
Books Completed:
As A Man Thinketh
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude