I'm working on a project that I need help with. Basically, I'm designing a website to help all Ghanaian students who are applying to colleges in the US. The idea is to create a single website with almost all the resources and links that a student will need when applying to schools in the US. This is because most of the websites online are more bias towards domestic students and offer little for international students. Moreover, a good number of folks back home have to pay to use the internet which is so slow that it takes more than ten minutes to load a single page sometimes. What makes matters worse is that our brethren back home have not had much exposure to the internet and often times do not have the luxury of time, skills and money to do any reasonable research online. The result is that there is an uneven playing field where very brilliant students who could have made it to some of the best colleges in the world but do not have the needed resources are not able to make it here. What hurts me the most is that there are some extremely good students who could easily use the vast resources here in the US to improve themselves but do not even consider throwing in an application because they are deterred by the cost of college here. It's true that education in the US is extremely expensive and it is virtually impossible to get a full scholarship but some have made it here with nothing and that means that it is possible.

The other main feature of the website is to create two huge databases: one of Ghanaian students in Ghana and the other of Ghanaian students in the US. What I'm hoping to do is to link each student in Ghana to one student in the US. The student in US will serve as a mentor to the Ghanaian student; advising, reviewing essays, helping with the application, etc. I'm hoping to link students with sort of the same background so that they will be able they will be able to better relate. For example, if a student wants to attend school X, we'll also try to connect him/her with a Ghanaian student in that school. Also, if there is a student who is applying from the Northern Region, we could look for someone with similar experiences so that he/she guides the prospective student.

I've been playing with this idea for sometime now. I've been a victim of the admissions process myself twice and gotten bounced by almost 20 schools so I know how important this project is to me. It was a student from my former high school who finally helped me to get here. It's a long story. Everyone gave up hope but I worked with my mentor and we finally made it. I came here without having to pay anything. I can't say how thankful I am. Our universities are wonderful but they compare in no way to colleges here - at least in terms of resources. That is why I want to help our brothers and sisters back home who want to come and study in the US to be able to live out their dreams.

I'm currently working on the website (even though I don't know a line of code) and looking for a host. I'll post more details here when I'm done. Please let me know if you're interested and we could work on this together. Let us together help our brothers and sisters live out their dreams. Let us remember when we were in their shoes and probably how desperate we were. Let us look back at all the wonderful opportunities that we've gotten since coming to the US (for those in the US). And let us make an effort to help.