Foust has connected her work with the Yonkufa Project in Ghana to her FFA students at Jordan High School.
“Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve.” The final lines of the FFA motto proudly showcase the importance of serving one’s community. Hannah Foust, an agriculture teacher and FFA advisor at Jordan High School in Durham, N.C., takes the meaning behind those words to a global level.
Every summer, Foust travels to Ghana with the Yonkufa Project, a nonprofit that aims to improve the lives of people in rural parts of Africa. Foust’s role in the organization includes spending time at the Presbyterian School in Enchi, with the goal of improving literacy, English skills and agriculture knowledge in the students. Additionally, they’ve worked to set up chickens at the school for the kids to be provided with fresh eggs. Foust adds that the goal was to “help the school become more self-sustainable … so that they would not spend as much money on their food.”
The project began in the winter of 2023, when Foust’s former professor at the University of Mount Olive reached out to her with the idea. Dr. John Blackwell chairs the education committee for the Yonkufa Project and thought Foust would be a good fit to carry out his plans. The following summer, in 2024, the first trip to Ghana was underway and they were able to bring an incubator and chicks to the school.
Foust has connected her work with the Yonkufa Project in Ghana to her FFA students at Jordan High School. To teach the Presbyterian School students about the proper care of their new chickens, Foust’s students put together videos explaining different aspects of chicken care, such as what they can eat and how often to provide them with fresh water.
Additionally, the students had the opportunity to write letters back and forth, which helped the Ghanaian students increase their English abilities and literacy and provide insights to both groups on how different parts of the world work. Lila Christie, a former Jordan FFA Chapter president and current North Carolina State University freshman, says the experience taught her a lot.
“That really opened my eyes to how different agriculture and life is in different parts of the world,” she says. Christie adds that she was “inspired to learn more about sustainable agriculture” and is now pursuing it in college. Seeing Foust’s work also pushed her to “want to help make agriculture more accessible to people … and be interested in study abroad opportunities.”
Foust says this is her “favorite part of the project” because the “students in Enchi received the letters and were very excited.” Through these experiences, she provides opportunities to both her students in the United States and in Ghana to improve their communication skills and learn about different cultures.
Looking ahead, Foust and the rest of the Yonkufa Project team plans to expand learning to other middle schools in Enchi through potential workshops. They are also working on a “Goats for Ghana” project to bring in dairy goats to the school and improve undernourishment issues that are common in the area.
Foust’s work with the Yonkufa project has not only improved the livelihood of the kids in the Presbyterian School in Enchi, but also inspired Jordan High School students and FFA members to search for opportunities to create communities around the world and understand the importance of agriculture on an international scale.
Whether she’s teaching in Ghana or North Carolina, Foust exemplifies the “Living to Serve” line of the motto — and it shows.
