Malaka Grant
Malaka serves as the Chair and Founder of the Korle Bu Family Fund.
“I have had many facilitators, few instructors, and fewer influencers. One of the biggest influencers in my lifetime has been Mrs. Margaret Nkrumah, my principal at SOS HGIC. At an event during our senior week after final exams, she joined us for dinner chatting with us individually, inquiring what we had planned post graduation. Most of us proclaimed we would go off university (as expected) in the UK or USA and most likely get a job in our field of study.
‘And then?’ she asked.
Well, we’d come back to Ghana in a few years, build our homes and then retire.
‘No, no you won’t,’ she chided. ‘You will get your tertiary education, yes, but then you will come home and do something great for Africa. All of you will.’
That was in 1996, and I have watched Ghana’s growth and diminution in certain areas with various levels of satisfaction and uneasiness, but mostly with uneasiness. I have guided by Dr. Wellington Boone’s admonishment to “Think Globally, but act Locally”. Even the smallest steps in making change in your home town or city can have a ripple effect throughout your nation, and sometimes the world. To borrow from a colleague of mine, a “grassroots” movement is needed to affect change in Africa. Large government programs have failed to touch the larger populace. It will take the careful hand of each member of our communities to bring about real change, and so we’ll build from the bottom up. It is my hope that the Korle Bu Family Fund will inspire more members of the African Diaspora and Africans on the continent to be the foundation for our communities, and pool our resources to move our nations forward to the glory of God.
Malaka graduated from SOS HGIC in Tema, Ghana with an International Baccalaureate in 1996; and Hampton University with a BA in Public Relations 2000. She currently works in the field of Human Resources.