Students hope to see Motherland

by Damon C. Williams

4/2/2012

The Motherland awaits. And hopefully, by the end of the summer, Say Yes To Education will be able to get there.

Say Yes To Education, a non-profit that focuses on and strengthens education by offering a series of alternative education programs, is hoping to send area high school juniors to Ghana, Africa, in August, but it must raise money to fill the funding gap that exists.

“I’ve been working with Say Yes kids almost since the beginning. I met them as third-graders and now they are about to be seniors,” said Dr. Michelle Strongfields, a longtime Say Yes supported and organizer of the fund-raisers. “I know how important this is, and I have committed myself to this, and will do anything to help them. We have to boost our youth and give them a push.”

Strongfields, a physician, and her husband, Stephen Fields, know about educating inner-city youth. Together, they have created the “I Am Science” initiative, which, among other things, leads a science workshop that introduces students to science in a stress-free and fun environment. “We have worked with the Say Yes kids; we do a Saturday school, where we have science lab with the kids,” Strongfields said. “My daughter is a physicist and does optics with them, studying the physics of light and sound, and my other daughter does technology with them.

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