It's my great honor to introduce this young lady to those of you who might not have heard of her, and for those of you who have, to hopefully share one or two things that you probably didn't know about Deborah Ahenkorah and her journey so far. The Visionnaire Series begins.
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Privilege
Vs Responsibility
At 24 years, Deborah Ahenkorah is living
proof of the heights a person can reach just by trying.
A native of the Eastern Region, Deborah
grew up with her parents in Ghana’s capital Accra. She attended North Ridge
Lyceum, and later enrolled at Wesley Girls’ High School in Cape Coast. Consequently,
she proceeded on scholarship to Bryn Mawr College in the USA, for her
university degree.
“I had no reason to want to come back to
Ghana. I’m going to America, why would I want to come back to Ghana? But in the
four years that I was in school various experiences, you know, switched my mind
180 degrees,” Deborah recounted.
According to the self-proclaimed
adventuress who once hawked children’s clothing at the Makola Market in Accra out
of sheer curiosity, her epiphany lay in acknowledging both the privilege and
responsibility that came with her Ivy League Bryn Mawr education.
“I was trying to be a lawyer, make some
good money, you know? But then it became really more than that,” she said. “It
became: Look, like it or not your education gives you some privilege. What are
you going to do with it?”
What Deborah did was to start an on campus
book drive in 2007 in order to get more literature to children and youth across
Africa. However she soon realized that the real issue was not a lack of
books,
but rather access to literature that Africans could actually relate to.
Deborah explained: “How was it an okay
solution that: African children can’t read. Well, let’s get them American books
to read because American people are writing their books? I felt that African
people had to write their own books too.”
Building
Blocks & Shoe-String Budgets
Idea rooted in mind, Deborah sought out
funding opportunities, including the 100 Projects for Peace. While she didn’t secure
that particular grant, she did have a pretty good draft proposal which she
improved upon and submitted for minor grants at her college. This time around,
she got the money she needed.
Money in hand, the next step was to
identify someone, a field supervisor, who would not only share her vision, but also
offer guidance in implementing her idea.
Deborah found both in Rama Shagaya, a Bryn Mawr
and Harvard Business School alumnus who, at the time, was was on the lookout
for Africa-related projects to get involved in. Between them, the Golden Baobab
Prize officially took off in July 2008.
“So
I got some money, came home one summer, plugged myself in an internet cafe, and
the goal was to start the first - okay well, at that time it wasn’t even that
ambitious - the goal was just to organize
this writing competition.”
Things didn’t turn out so simple. Golden Baobab needed a website, judges, and a good amount of publicity and promotion
to reach the furthest corners of Africa. To top it all off, Debbie was still a
full-time college student.
“I had no experience at web design. I had
to build a website that summer,” Debbie remembered. “But it worked.”
With only 12 entries submitted that summer,
and on the verge of writing off the literary award as a failure, Deborah
received some invaluable advice from a mentor.
“One
of the older mentors that I have was like, actually no. Since you run it you
can decide whether it has failed or not,” Deborah remembered. “You can say this
has not failed because I’m going to extend the deadline and put in more work to
get more people to write.”
And so she continued.
A couple of months later, the number of
entries submitted totalled 76 stories from 9 countries, something Deborah
describes as “a great success for something we marketed with zero dollars.”
She added: “What was interesting about the
first year was that we were going to give 3 different prizes, $800 each. I
didn’t have any of this money.”
To raise the funds, both co-founders dipped
into their pockets. The book drive club which Deborah started at Bryn Mawr also
helped raise $800 for one prize. The remainder was covered after Deborah
“literally went around to people begging.”
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| Reading with kids at Accra's Mamprobi Gale Community Library |
Challenges,
Motivation, and Personal Growth
According to Deborah, the key aim of Golden Baobab is to discover, nurture and celebrate promising writers of African
children’s stories.
The fact that the prize is
overseen primarily by a team of volunteers demonstrates just how passionate the
organization is about its cause. Unfortunately, not having a full-time team has
also been a major challenge.
“My friends were just so supportive. People
believed in it and they’d help out a semester, one year, whatever,” Deborah
said. “But it just wasn’t consistent; because whenever someone new comes, you
have to retrain that person.”
Nevertheless, Deborah believes Golden Baobab's impact is enough reason to keep striving on.
Her favourite “success story” involves a
lady who happened to be a librarian at one of the Canadian libraries Deborah
frequented as a child in Ngoye, Krobo.
After having someone type up her story
for her, the librarian, who didn’t know how to use a computer, broke down in
tears when she heard she was a shortlisted candidate for the
Prize during the first year.
Deborah said: “She sat down and she
just cried. Here’s a woman whose read countless of books to children and never
thought that her story could potentially be worthy of anything.”
“That’s when it hit me that oh goodness,
this is not just me behind my computer at the internet cafe. This is actually
writers and actually people with dreams and people with stories who want to
tell these stories and who want people to read these stories,” the young
entrepreneur said.
Aside helping make the dreams of others
come true, the Golden Baobab Prize has had a profound impact on the co-founder herself.
“Personally I think one of the most
difficult things has been developing confidence in my ability to make this
work, because this is not what I set out to do,” Deborah admitted.
With her mind set on being a lawyer, Golden Baobab first started off as a short-term project for Deborah. That
she could handle. What shook her to the core however was when things evolved and started
“getting out of control.”
“How can I, just barely graduated school,
run a pan-African literary prize, you know, that is saying that it’s going to
change the African literary landscape? What skills, qualifications do I have to
make this work?” Deborah asked herself.
Apparently, enough. Three years down the line, Golden Baobab's Executive Director is
coming into her own and acknowledges her role in making the Golden Baobab Prize
what it is today.
“I guess my resilience and passion for it
thus far is evidence that I can continue to take it places. And, I guess just
with doing it for three years I’ve realized that actually I can do it a little
bit,” she said.
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Debbie with staff members of Playing for Change
during the Echoing Green Final Interviews |
Winning
the Echoing Green Fellowship
It’s been three years since the Golden
Baobab Prize took off. Since then Deborah and her team have taken many bold
steps in overseeing the annual literary award which has received over 200
entries since inception. They have also gotten literary giants like Ama Ata Aidoo to actively participate in their mission.
In June 2011, Deborah was named one of
“today’s boldest social change visionaries” by Echoing Green; an acclaimed lending network with over two
decades of experience in supporting ideas aimed at addressing some of society’s
most pressing issues.
She applied for the Echoing Green fellowship after the application was forwarded to her – three days to the
deadline - by Maya Ajmera, founder of the Global Fund for Children, which helps
fund Golden Baobab through grants. Prior to that, a friend had forwarded the fellowship
application to her via email. Her response?
“Haha. Delete.”
“The
funny thing is I was on the Echoing Green mailing list and had seen them
sending the mail that people should apply for the fellowship. But it never even
crossed my mind to apply for it. I was like, there’s no way I’m going to get
this. This is for high rollers,” Deborah explained.
It would seem, however, that destiny would
not take no for an answer. With the deadline three days away, Deborah spent an
entire day contemplating whether or not to put in the needed effort. By day
two, she was working feverishly on an application which many take months to
complete.
While the Echoing Green application process
was by no means painless, Deborah regards it as a very “powerful” experience
which drastically shifted her thinking to the impact of the Golden Baobab.
Through what she calls the “friendliest competition” she’d ever been in, she
also got to network with likeminded individuals who “were just all so excited
about each other’s projects”.
“It was a very empowering process for me in
many ways and I didn’t think that I would even make it to the semi-finalist
round, but that was okay because it had been a positive application
experience,” she recounted.
But make it to the semi-finalist round she
did, and as her mother rightly predicted, she sailed through to the finals as
well. Ultimately Deborah was one of the final 15 fellows selected from 2,800
applications and initiatives.
“It
was a very positive experience and, again, the competition was clearly
top-notch, so nobody could be comfortable or confident,” Deborah said. “I
certainly was not comfortable or confident and it was a huge shock to me when I
realized that I’d been selected.”
With the generous support from Echoing
Green, Deborah and Golden Baobab can kiss their shoestring days
goodbye as they push on in their quest to rival the Heinemann African Writers series and change Africa’s literary landscape.
“I’m very excited because it’s going to
open a lot of doors for Golden Baobab, and it comes at a time when I think
Golden Baobab really needs that push,” she gushed. “It locks me in for two years
so there’s no running away. It’s just going to mean a lot of really good things
for Golden Baobab.”
The Golden Baobab Prize
So what exactly does it take to submit an entry to the Golden Baobab Prize? Well, first off, you have to be a citizen of
an African state to apply and you can apply all-year round.
“It doesn’t matter what race you are,
doesn’t matter where in the world you are, so far as you’re a citizen,” Deborah
emphasized.
Stories accepted tend to be between 1000 to
5000 words and are reviewed in two separate judging sessions by a diverse panel
of some of the best people in the children’s literature or African literature
fields.
Entries which make it past the initial
reading session and into the top 10 tend to “speak to any kind of person, not
just literati.” In addition, they need to be solid stories.
“One thing that definitely we look for, I
think, is just imagination, solid writing and a story that reflects something
African. You know it could be uniquely African, faintly African, but a story
that is an African story without doubt,” Deborah said.
There are two main categories for
consideration: ‘Stories for readers aged 8-11years,’ and ‘Stories for readers aged 12-15 years’. In addition, there's a special prize for the most promising writer below
age 18.
“This is a very exciting category. It’s one
of those that I’m really excited about because this is identifying a writer at
the beginning of their career,” Deborah explained.
She continued: “[It’s] saying that we see a
lot of promise in you, you’re going to go places, and we’re going to try our best to help you
go places and to help you not to lose your dream for writing.”
Ahmed Farah, a 16-year old Kenyan boy who
submitted five stories to the prize in 2010,
won last year’s “promising writer”
title with
Letters from the Flames.
Set in his home country during the 2007-08
post-election crisis,
Ahmed’s story is about an 11-year old Kenyan girl who writes letters to her
dead father.
“It was written so convincingly in the
voice of an 11-year old Kenyan girl,” Deborah exclaimed. “This is a 16-year old
Kenyan boy. That spoke so much to us that who is this boy who dares to write as
an 11-year old Kenyan girl?...It was exciting to discover him and his work.”
In addition to winning the monetary prizes,
winning authors and stories are connected with leading publishing companies in
order to produce African books for children and young adults to enjoy.
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Debbie celebrating Golden Baobab's 2nd Anniversary with Prize
supporters in Johannesburg, South Africa. |
Moving
Forward – How Can You Get Involved?
Aside the obvious – writing and submitting
entries to the Prize – Golden Baobab is on the lookout for support to “fully
establish” itself. That said, if you’re – or know someone who is - a corporate
sponsor, grantmaker, publisher, illustrator, writer or passionate individual
who identifies with Golden Baobab’s mission and vision, you might want to keep
tabs on Deborah and her organization via the organization's website,Facebook, and/or Twitter.
“Our goal in ten years is good quality,
beautiful written and illustrated African books in bookstores all over the
world,” Deborah shared.
As someone who's already proven that she can transform an idea into reality, here's what Deborah has for African youth:
“My advice or word of inspiration would be
that - so cliché - but just do it. I feel like a lot of people have really
great ideas and stall on those ideas because they think they can’t do it. That
was me. I thought I couldn’t do it, but I had to do it and then I realized that
oh I can. And I don’t think that’s a unique story. I think we have the capacity
to do what we want to do. If we would just do it, we’ll realize that we could.”
Thumbs up to Deborah and the Golden Baobab Prize! We look forward to many more exciting stories. All the best as you continue along your visionary path!
