An Evening of Hope for Ghana

Saturday certainly wasn't over after RFA's Super Saturday. My good friend, Rich Wiltshire, who had previously worked in Ghana, was organizing a charity event to raise money for this worthy cause. He raise his goal of $5000 for SMIDO which will be used to "improve their training center and give the people in the Suame Magazine community a little bost to have a better life."

It was an interesting evening as I met some people I haven't seen in a while (as far back as our CFES days when Rich and I were organizing Congress events for the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students in Toronto). Ironically, many of them have gone on to do their MBA at Rotman (myself included of course).

It was my conversation with Rich in Malaysia which helped me make the decision to come back to Canada to do my MBA at Rotman. He is certainly one of the ambassadors I was previously referring to. He was on exchange at National University of Singapore (NUS) and he was travelling around and visited me in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. We climbed Mt. Kinabalu, visited Jalan Gaya and took the whirlwind tour (he was only there for a few days). I remember our conversation sitting in one of the few Starbucks in the city, located at Times Square mall when we were chatting about our futures and where we saw ourselves going.

Later, he would talk to me about his time spent in Ghana and how he was going there to work to do international / business development work. In looking at his photos, I have to admit there were some striking similarities in the context he was working in compared to Kota Kinabalu despite the geographic distance.

Currently, Rich and Fayaz Manji (my official Rotman GBC buddy) are currently trying to build a stronger program to entice Rotman MBAs to do development work in Ghana. If you are interested you should certainly get in contact with them and look into it.