Support the STARS Conference

Each year, PCVs in Ghana plan and organize and leadership conference called STARS for Senior High students. Each volunteer brings one boy and one girl student to the week long conference so that they can attend workshops and lectures from successful Ghanaians, learn important skills and topics, and meet other motivated students from across the country. I am hoping to bring students from my school to this years conference in June. Although I am not working on the planning for the event, many other hardworking PCVs are. We get a variety of sponsorships from different organizations in Ghana, but the more funds we have available, the bigger and better the conference can be. Please help if you can by donating something small to help us help ours stars in Ghana. Below is a letter with more information from Kim, the Coordinator for the conference.

Dear one and all,

Greetings once again from Ghana! The STARS Conference project has now been APPROVED for funding. The next part is up to you! As you all know (some of you from first-hand experience!) STARS is an awesome annual conference for secondary school kids. We each bring our best and brightest for a week-long youth leadership camp. It is an amazing experience that I believe is changing lives for the better. Some of these kids have never travelled outside their home region before. We give them a chance to come together for a week of activities with their peers, interacting with Ghanaian guest speakers who have succeeded in their lives.

If you want to see more info about last year's conference, you can check out the website or blog:
http://starsconference.blogspot.com/ or www.starsconference.com (which might be having technical trouble right now...bear with me!).

Of course, this doesn't all happen magically--it takes time, money, and plenty of "sweat equity" as we run around Ghana securing donations from Ghana corporate sponsors, planning the agenda, lining up guest speakers, etc. This year, we also decided to apply for Peace Corps Partership Program (PCPP) number so that our loved ones in the states can donate money to the project tax free. If you make a donation, I personally guarantee that 100% of your funds will go to this worthwhile project. Click on this link to donate!
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=641-261 (If the link doesn't work, go to www.peacecorps.gov, then click on "Donate Now", then "Donate to Volunteer Projects", then search for Ghana, then you'll see my project (K. Weaver / S. Safavi).

I've heard the website is manually updated so if it's down, PLEASE PLEASE keep trying. We have to have the project "filled" by the end of April. Even $5 will help us a lot. In case you are wondering what your donation will be used to buy, here are some ideas:

$5 will provide 3 good meals, a snack, and housing for a student for one day of the conference. $10 will allow us to give an "HIV Peer Educator Kit" to the students so they can take what they've learned back to their schools--and thus reach hundreds of students.
$20 will allow us to pay for transportation for a student from a remote village school to and from the conference site.

Anything at all you are willing to donate would be much appreciated by me, the other volunteers working on the project, and of course, the kids who get to have this amazing experience. If you have any questions, send me an email!

Warmly, Kim

Anything you can do to help us out would be great. Thanks in advance to you all.
Love,
-Toby