Josie Sam (pictured at right), UAF graduate student from Ghana, West Africa, has found studying in Alaska to be everything she had hoped it would be. “The courses are quite insightful and interesting and the people are friendly,” she said. “I’m looking forward to learning a lot more so I can apply it back home.”
Sam was inspired to move to Alaska after getting to know Lewis Shapiro, a senior research consultant at the Geophysical Institute and retired UAF faculty member who does volunteer work in Ghana. Sam earned English and history degrees at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. When she learned of the professional master’s degree offered by SNRAS she realized it was just what she had been seeking. Arriving in Fairbanks in January 2009, she immersed herself in natural resources management studies, with emphasis on rural development, gender issues, and community water management.
When she returns home to Ghana she wants to help communities find access to clean water – crucial to improve the lives of women and children, she said, and to build mechanisms to sustain the improvements. “Organizations need to help set up management structures for the long term,” she said. “Education features strongly in that.”
She will return to Ghana briefly in August, when she will get to see how the water projects are going and of course will visit her family. It is her parents she credits with her success. “I grew up in a family that made no distinction between men and women; we were encouraged to do what we wanted to do and get an education.” While in her second year of college, Sam read a novel, Faceless, by Amma Darko, which opened her eyes about child abuse and rural/urban migration. It moved her so much that she based her undergraduate research on it, working with street children in urban areas, studying the psychological reasons for domestic violence, and delving into the dowry system which equates women’s worth as property. “It started me thinking and brought everything into focus. I wanted to be part of the effort to correct what was happening,” Sam said. So she volunteered with the Ark Foundation, a women’s and children’s rights organization in Ghana, where she met a friend who introduced her to Shapiro.
That was the beginning of an association that would culminate in the establishment of the Nyarkoa Foundation, a US based non-profit organization that raises funds to support rural water projects in Ghana. As Dr. Shapiro and Sam became friends and worked together on the water projects, he decided to help her further her education. “She’s got a lot of potential,” Dr. Shapiro said. He invited her to live with him and his wife in Fairbanks. “This is a good investment in a Third World country,” he said.
While at UAF, Sam wants to acquire knowledge and insight into development processes that involve sustainable use of the natural environment by rural people. “Much of rural development is a natural resource management problem, because rural people are the managers of much of our land resources,” she wrote in her university application. “Their use of the land affects wildlife, forest biodiversity, soil quality, water quality, and other natural values. Improving their quality of life without negatively affecting the environment will require an understanding of the people, their way of life, the natural environment and the knowledge of how these can be made to interact in a positive way. I hope to develop the analytical and policy-making skills needed for this purpose. Specifically, I wish to gain the capacity to identify the environmental issues of concern to rural people and to design and implement policies geared toward addressing these concerns. Furthermore, considering the limitations posed by gender inequality on national progress in general and rural development in particular, I hope to receive the education that will enable me to effectively engage rural people to become agents of change in their communities. Promoting social justice while working toward sustainable rural development is my utmost goal, and I hope to gain the ability to accomplish this through knowledge acquired during this program.”
Her advisor, Associate Professor Susan Todd, praised Sam’s experience in microfinance, women’s empowerment, sustainable agriculture projects, water projects, and many other areas that form the foundation of sustainable development of natural resources in low-income countries. ”Josie is sharp, quick, mature, confident, capable, and hard working; she’s very serious about her studies and has a crystal clear sense of direction,” Dr. Todd stated. “It’s an honor to have her here at UAF and I have no doubt that she is going to make a substantial contribution to the alleviation of suffering and poverty in her country.”
In her free time, Sam has been attending concerts, plays, and movies with new friends in Fairbanks. And she is passionate about reading, knowing that a good book can change lives.
Sam expressed gratitude to Judi and Lewis Shapiro for their continued support and inspiration, and also acknowledged Susan Todd for taking her under her wings.
Addendum: (Jan. 30, 2014)
Josie Sam's foundation, The Nyarkoa Foundation, now has a website. The Nyarkoa Foundation was created to develop and fund projects to provide sustainable sources of clean water for the rural population in the Ajumako Enyan Essiam District of the Central Region of Ghana. It is a non-profit 501c(3) corporation chartered in the state of Alaska. Since its inception, all donations to the foundation have been used for project expenses in Ghana; administrative and travel costs have been, and will continue to be, paid by the officers of the foundation.
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