The Learn Africa Project is a small-scale community development project designed by undergraduate students at Gordon College, Massachusetts. The project was created to prevent disease, promote education, and facilitate cross-cultural understanding in West Africa. Planning for the project began September 2010, and lasted until May 2011. On June 4, 2011, a team was sent to live and work in a village called Ganavé, on the Togo-Benin border.

For two months, the team worked to prevent soil-transmitted helminth-related disease, and administered a community-wide health survey. The group also partnered with community leaders to construct a badly needed primary school. The school project is now on hold due to a lack of funding. Since August, 2011, the group has focused attention on the results of the health survey, producing one preliminary report, which was published online at http://www.hiidunia.com/2011/12/the-learn-africa-project-public-health-applied-learning-and-research-internship/. Students at Gordon College are now conducting empirical analyses of the survey data with the intention of writing a professional paper, which will be released by early May, 2012. This paper will evaluate the relationship between health and education in Ganavé, as a case study for the Maritime region of Southern Togo.

In addition to seeking additional funding for the completion of the Ganavé primary school, the Learn Africa Project has continued to collaborate with it’s sponsoring organization Clinics of Hope (COH). Student researchers have since reported to Clinics of Hope the empirical findings of their research and worked with the organization to develop more effective community health programs.

The Learn Africa Project is an independent, but collaborative project, endorsed by Clinics of Hope (www.clinicsofhope.org) and Gordon College, Massachusetts (www.gordon.edu). Student participants received academic internship credit for designing the applied research component of The Learn Africa Project. Key project advisors included COH founders Tom Mancini and Debbie Motta, and Gordon College professor of biology Dorothy Boorse.