High school seniors have a lot on their plate as it is between planning for prom, studying for exams, and applying to universities.
Yet for 18-year-old Max Owobu from the Bronx, his senior year has been interspersed with a trip to Ghana while managing his international nonprofit that sponsors children’s education in the country.
At age 15, Owobu tells GNN, he began to spend his summers in the country of his Nigerian father’s upbringing, where he saw kids needing to work and earn rather than spending time in school.
“I was seeing kids my age working, just selling things on the street or in shops, working along with the family to try and get by rather than going to school to get an education so they could better their lives for the future,” he said.
It was not long after that Max founded the Yenko Foundation, a 501(c)3 that paid for a child in Ghana named Matthew to go to school via the money Max had stowed away from his weekly allowance.
Yenko Foundation raises money to sponsor children’s K-5 education, providing them with school meals, tuition, and uniforms. Though for the most part across America, the public school system allows access to most of these items for free, in Ghana, a quality education will most often be attained in private schools with tuition costs.
But in a chaotic and massive city like Ghana’s capital of Accra, this practice can also lend itself to hucksters and scam artists who charge parents hundreds of dollars to deliver little more than stern daycare—something Max and young Matthew almost fell afoul of.
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From a friend in-country, Max learned of a school called Calvary Methodist, and it took one visit for him to know it was where he wanted to operate.
“The kids were just so joyous, so enthusiastic, Just so joyful to be going to school.”
So far, the foundation has channeled donations to pay for 10 children to go through grades K-5. $1,000 gets a child tuition, school uniforms, transportation to and from school, school meals, and supplies for a whole year.
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Max said that his near-term aim is to sponsor between 10 and 15 children through primary school, before expanding to help hospitals, orphanages, “anyone who needs help in Ghana.”
It’s a big undertaking, but Max isn’t short on ambition. Nor—at just 18 years of age—time.
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