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Rev Dr Joyce Aryee (left), Founder and Executive Director of Salt & Light Ministries, presenting the award to the UHAS team, winners of the 2016 edition
Rev Dr Joyce Aryee (left), Founder and Executive Director of Salt & Light Ministries, presenting the award to the UHAS team, winners of the 2016 edition

OKF launches 2017 Community Service Award

The Osei-Kusi Foundation (OKF) Community Service Awards (CSA) 2017 has been launched in Accra to mark the beginning of a search for a tertiary students’ group to resolve a challenge facing a particular community, to receive a GH¢ 10,000 grant.

In order to partake in the upcoming competition, tertiary students, after a thorough research, are expected to form a team of three to five students with a name, and an identified disadvantaged community in Ghana and present a proposal with an action plan on developing young people in that community. 

Participating teams for the 2017 edition would be required to undertake a voluntary service, such as teaching in a deprived school, cleaning a hospital, or engage in any other voluntary work in a community of their choice. Evidence of this service forms part of the criteria for selection. 

Since its inception in 2014, CSA, a brainchild of OKF and Selfless 4Africa Inc., had been the biggest platform in Ghana for tertiary students to exhibit volunteerism and patriotism as their contribution towards national development. 

Each year, a team is selected by a panel of judges to receive a grant from OKF and Selfless4Africa Inc., to implement a project to improve the well-being of the youth in Ghana and support people living in deprived communities.

Seven teams

When all the student groups have submitted their applications from the various institutions, seven teams would be shortlisted and taken through business training.

The launch of the programme saw Dr Joyce Aryee presenting the award to the team from the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), winners of the 2016 edition. 

According to the Executive President of OKF, Dr Kofi Osei-Kusi, just like the previous editions, the shortlisted teams would make a face-to-face presentation at the grand finale to be held on June 23, 2017.

He said out of the seven teams, one team would be selected by a carefully selected and experienced panel of judges and would receive a reward of GH¢10,000,  which means the team would use GH¢7,000 to implement the community project while GH¢3,000 would be shared among the participants in the winning team.

Application forms  

He indicated that students who were willing to compete could access the forms by downloading and completing the application forms on the OKF website, which is www.oseikusifoundation.org.

OKF is an award-winning foundation that is helping to transform the lives of young people by providing them with tools, resources and training they need to make a global impact. 

Selfless4Africa (S4A) is a non-profit organisation based in the US. It was formed with the goal of challenging people in Africa and elsewhere to perform acts of selflessness in their communities, which builds up a domino effect of selflessness that changes the status quo of poverty, ignorance and corruption on the continent. 

S4A, in partnership with OKF, is using the Community Service Awards as a medium to reach university students in Ghana and to identify young people who aspire through innovative community-based projects to transform the lives of individuals in their localities and gain invaluable leadership skills and experience.

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