Imagine having a standard upbringing, or as Nick Caccavo put it, an upbringing as “generically portrayed by Hollywood PG movies.” Nick grew up in a house with a mother who was a pharmacist (something near and dear to my heart as the son of a man who was a pharmacist at one point) and a father who is a well regarded, Vermont lawyer. As Nick put it, he didn’t “grasp the reality that the world is not an even playing field outside of Disney movies and my own little world” with this upbringing.
Nick changed majors in college from business to history and joined the Army ROTC to pursue his dream of fling Apache helicopters. Nick spent two years in the ROTC and was set to graduate and become an officer when he realized that it wasn’t for him, probably for a variety of reasons. Nick lost some direction, but ended up with a double major in history and political science with a minor in archeology. Deciding to spend a semester abroad, in a place he would never go on vacation, Nick of course chose the University of Ghana. As Nick says “Once there, I was confronted with realities that I couldn’t really appreciate up until that point.”
Nick can explain his first experience in Ghana better than I ever could. As Nick tells the story “My first experience in Ghana (aside from nearly wetting my pants while waiting to get through customs) was getting ripped off. When I stepped out of the airport some jumped up and stole my bags. I followed him of course, and fortunately he put them in the waiting van chartered to bring me and other fellow international students to the university. He charged my $20. I didn’t particularly enjoy losing control of my belongings that fast, but thrilled that it had worked out ok I paid him his fee. Only afterwards did I discover he was just some random dude and that $20 was at least a month’s pay for him. Most other students hadn’t been so easily fooled and had either outright refused the service or been parted with only $1-5.”
Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is how Nick describes much of Ghana, even when you can buy most things for $1 and the people are friendly. Nick realized that nothing was on time, busses were no shows, as, scarily, were the professors! The government would literally rubber stamp documents and, despite the age of computers in most of the world, much of Ghana still used actual paper for the paperwork! Nick felt most people in power were trying to make life difficult for those people who needed help. Nick realized that there were a million problems, but that they all stemmed from people not fixing things.
One day, Nick was invited to see a library built by a local friend of his and a group of students. Nick thought “Heck yeah. Finally, someone is actually doing something instead of just talking about it.” Nick and four other American students went on the visit. The library was impressive. Small, well placed and freshly painted. There was only one problem: there were no books. A library with no books is about as functional as a Kardashian marriage. Nick realized then that things that had to be improved. Nick says “I didn’t know how to solve any of the bigger issues I’d been struggling with, but I sure as shit wasn’t going to waste my time reading story books to a bunch of little kids that didn’t even understand English at some orphanage for a day. I decided to stock that library with books.”
As with most things, Nick realized that this was easier said than done. They all wanted to do something and they decided to work together to reach their goal. After 2 months of weekly meetings, they had accomplished having 2 months of weekly meetings! But, Nick did learn “a lot about managing groups of people with disparate personalities and cultures.”
Nick returned to the US and talked to his close friends and family into helping him get books. He even went to his old high school. His high school librarian put him in touch with a network of Vermont librarians and Nick learned that libraries are always getting rid of old books. The libraries are often glad to find someone to take away the old books for free, especially for a good cause. Taking his Chevy Prizm, Nick drove around and picked them up. Shortly after graduating college, Nick’s parents’ barn was piled high with over 5 tons of books.
Moving back home after college, Nick did not have any luck finding a job. So he decided to raise money to ship the books to Ghana. By the end of the summer, Nick had enough money to send the first batch of books. Nick had incorporated along the way and “built up a network of donors and volunteers in the US as well as a support base and partnerships with organizations and communities in Ghana (my friend Kwabena Danso had been organizing the community in Ghana simultaneously in preparation for receiving the books). By the time the books shipped, we were a little non-profit organization.”
Once the books were there, Nick decided to continue and address other issues in the community. Students couldn’t attend school due to a lack of money and women couldn’t get loans. It became Nick’s goal to “address inequality of opportunity in this community and build their autonomy so that they could pull themselves up by their own boot straps.”
What have they accomplished? Over 150 women have started or grown businesses with microloans. Each year, seventy children attend school with books, uniforms, backpacks, paper, pens, lunch and school fees all paid for. There is a bamboo bike making workshop. Soccer teams have been sponsored along with emergency medical care to people in need. A pen-pal program has put together over 1000 people in the US and Ghana. Thousands of books have ended up in libraries. Teachers are now coming back to combat “brain drain.” They are now half way towards reaching their goal of making the operation entirely locally run. There are seven paid staff members in Ghana who administer all of the programs. I could go on and on, but you should check out the website www.yonsoproject.org.
As for our young Nick, he is no longer 20 years old and unsure of his future. As he said “Personally, one of my big concerns as a 20 year old looking into the future was that I’d waste my 20’s (I know, pretty heavy stuff. Good thing I’m the only one in the world who has to deal with issues of this magnitude). At the time, getting killed or disgruntled in the Army seemed the most likely risk. Now that I’m getting close to done with my 20’s, I look back and realize that they just kind of disappeared into all this Yonso Project stuff (which has been a lot of work and frustration mixed with some success, and all volunteer) and I’m still basically in the same place I was when I was 20, not knowing what I want to do career-wise or life-wise. But I at least hope that for whatever the ultimate reason, it will turn out that I made the right choice back in college when I turned in my gear and walked away from the army.”
I, for one, am inspired by Nick. This kid could have easily graduated college, found a job, obtained a master’s degree and worked, providing a nice life for himself. Instead, he found a way to make a difference. This is an inspiring story.
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