Anansi Students
Qualification and Selection
Students in Ghana qualify for high school by passing an exam at the end of their 9th grade year. Each year awareness of Anansi has grown in rural villages around the town of Cape Coast and there are increasing numbers of applications to consider. The selection of Anansi students is based on demonstrated potential, recommendations from previous teachers, and financial need. Home visits are a part of the selection process.
The video below follows Agnes from her home to school.
Teen Pregnancy
The following is an excerpt from an email written by Anansi founder, Kathryn Roe. It illustrates traditional attitudes toward female education:
I’m not sure if I told you the story about talking with the secondary school teacher, when I was still in the planning stages of this project to fund African students for high school. We were in my living room discussing the number of student names we had from the teachers in Mpeasem, when [he] suggested that if we didn’t have money to fund all of them that “we should fund the boys as those village girls would just get pregnant and waste our money.”
I was so shocked that this remark should come from a secondary school teacher that I could not say anything. A few weeks later I did give him a piece of my mind and told him that even if this happened, the money would not be wasted as mothers needed an education (any amount) more than anyone in Africa.
In the fall of 2007, Kathryn learned that an Anansi student had dropped out of school and given birth to a baby boy. It was decided by the student's brother, who is only one year her senior but the acting patriarch of her family, that she would not be permitted to give the baby up for adoption.
Though it was adifficult decision to make, Anansi now has a strict policy that any student who becomes pregnant or fathers a child will no longer be sponsored through Anansi.