Young Legends of Inspiration - Prince Akpah

Though the youngest to be featured as a “Young Legend of Inspiration”, Prince Akpah is undoubtedly inspiring.  Only 21, Prince founded “Be A Girl”, an empowerment initiative focused on empowering young girls who are excellent in their academic endeavours. He recognized the need to motivate young girls who are doing very well in their academics but lack the motivation to do better. He then initiated “Be A Girl” to be used as a platform to appreciate achievements of young girls by awarding them citations and souvenirs. He did not let financial constraints hinder him from actualizing his idea and started this brainchild of his with the GHS 10 he could afford. This suggests that not having money isn’t a good excuse for not materializing your dream.

So far, “Be A Girl” has been to 3 regions where about 300 girls have been recognized from 20 schools. One of their most memorable events was when a 46 year old woman who was still in primary school was honoured, this led to her story to be featured in an international documentary.

As hard work always pays off, “Be A Girl” was recently shortlisted for the World Youth Summit, it has also been able to bring very influential women in Ghana to some of the schools they have been to and was also featured in a documentary by Viasat1 which paved a way for Prince to make an appearance on “The One Show” hosted by Anita Erskine.

They hope that this project would have the award winners inspire their other colleagues to take their academic work more seriously.

One beautiful thing that strikes me about Prince is his great passion for volunteerism. He believes volunteering is a great way to network and learn a lot of things he wouldn’t get the chance to learn in school. Through volunteerism, Prince happens to be the Director for projects at Synergy for Success - Ghana, Head of Media Relation for the Sangy Foundation, Ass. Director for New Media, African Achievers Award, Technical Director for Generational Thinkers, Ass.Treasurer for the Ghana Writers Awards and is also involved in Accra Youth Summit, Success Africa Conference, Global Hand washing Day, Diplomat101 and a lot others. All these positions are on voluntary basis.

Prince also thought about how he could help improve the presence of Ghanaians and their brands on the scene of social media. Starting the Ghana Media Rankings helped encouraged competition of the representation of Ghanaians and their brands on social media.

In the field of writing, he has authored a book titled “Determined to Conquer” which he plans to publish on his 24th birthday.

Prince believes that disappointments doesn’t come to end dreams but rather create opportunities. For financial reasons, he couldn’t make it to the university even though he had an admission to pursue Computer Science at the University of Cape Coast. That has not  deterred him from adding value to himself. He took action and has been pursuing his initiatives.

Making good use of his time is one key to his success. He mostly spends his Saturdays attending workshops, seminars, conferences or networking events to learn more and get inspired by other people’s achievements.

Prince aspires to be a successful Public Relations personality and also hopes to craft, develop and perfect concepts into international trademarks.

Prince was born on 24th April, 1993. He attended Amazing Love schools and furthered at St. Paul Senior High where he studied General Science and graduated to be the 21st out of 329 students who sat for WASSCE 2012 in his school. He hails from Avalavi and Wheta in the Volta Region of Ghana. He comes from a polygamous nuclear family of 27 comprising of 6 wives and 20 children of which he is the 16th born.

His favourite quote is “Poco a poco, uno viaja lejos” - Little by little, one travels far – J.R. R Tolkein.

Prince Akpah can be reached via:

Twitter: @tornyeli

Phone number: +233576274980

Google+ and Facebook: Akpah Prince

Blogs:

akpahprince.wordpress.com

africanviewpointjournal.com

E-mail: princeakpah@gmail.com