By Dan Domsic
One local, aspiring not-for-profit wants to ship a literal bus-load of school supplies and soccer gear to a group of private schools in Ghana.
The Beautiful Tree Foundation, Inc. launched an Indiegogo campaign called “Giving Education New Mileage” (www.indiegogo.com/projects/giving-education-new-mileage) to fund the purchase of a bus and its shipment to Ghana. The fundraising goal is $30,000.
Angelika Q. Fransen, Beautiful Tree Foundation director and Fishers resident, said the group worked with S.P.O.R.T.S., the HSE School District and businesses to amass enough materials to fill a storage container.
They also worked with local soccer clubs and the Fishers YMCA.
She said the school system that the project will directly benefit, the Omega Schools, has one bus amongst their thousands of students, a population that will grow as more schools are opened.
“They will increase their student body from 12,000 to potentially 20,000 and onward,” Fransen said.
Fransen said the Omega Schools may not always have knowledge of one another as they’re spread out over different types of communities in a coastal city called Accra.
“In order for them to know that they are part of a bigger network, they’re part of one chain of school, we like to connect to them,” she said. “ (And) so (we’d like to) offer a school bus to go and have them network.”
Fransen had the chance to witness such a networking event, a soccer tournament. She also noticed that not all of the kids got to play wearing cleats, many of which were girls. That’s where soccer gear comes into play.
Part of the funds raised on Indiegogo would go simply to gas for driving the bus down to Texas to be shipped.
About one-third of the $30,000 raised will go toward the bus itself, an expensive vehicle in Ghana, even with excessive mileage.
Fransen said Omega Schools invested in parts for its single bus, took kids to a soccer tournament, and then two weeks later, it was broken down.
There is little more than a month left before time is up on the Indiegogo funding campaign.