NewLeaf is an after-school teaching and mentoring project designed to help students in the Berekuso Township in the Eastern Region with their homework and to mentor them in the areas of leadership, effective communication, and goal setting and project planning. The curriculum for this project is based on experiential and interactive learning and group activities because we believe that the fastest way to learn is through experience. This project currently targets students from grade seven and eight (J.H.S. 1 & 2), emphasizes on gender equality, and has been in operation since February 2014.

NewLeaf was co-founded by seniors Vanessa Amoako ’16 and Fridah Karwitha ’16, to engage students in productive pursuits after school to prevent them from participating in, or becoming victims of crimes and sexual activities. Likewise, the Program seeks to solve the struggle that parents who can neither read, write nor speak the English language properly face in assisting their children with their homework. Currently, NewLeaf consists of sixty students and fifteen active and committed mentors and tutors who mentor and tutor the students in Math, English, Science and Information Communication Technology, three times a week for an hour.

In the past year, some of our notable activities and accomplishments include the following:

• An increase in student participants from 20 students to 60 students
• An increase in the number of mentors and tutors from 8 to 15
• A significant improvement in reading, written and verbal communication skills of our students, in which approximately 60% of our students can confidently carry on a conversation in English
• A successful Mentorship Day experience in which students were invited to the Ashesi campus to interact and engage with their mentors through games and other exciting activities
• Our first Mentor Training event in which mentors and tutors were trained on creating a comfortable and safe place for their students while learning the art of managing and handling diverse personalities during our sessions

NewLeaf continues to ensure the sustainability of its activities in the community and works to build stronger partnerships with members of the community and beyond in its efforts to expand its operations to other communities. This summer, the NewLeaf team is working to restructure our activities to include more exciting activities that will help the youth develop social skills, improve academic performance and enable them build stronger and supportive relationships with older youth and adults other than their siblings and parents.