St. Nicholas Charity Foundation has inaugurated a three-classroom block to augment the school’s current units with funding from Mytilineos S.A., a Greek-based industrial conglomerate, to provide more hope to the disadvantaged children in the school catchment area.

This brings to six the number of classroom units funded by Mytilineos SA in addition to the school canteen.

The project, which cost more than 130,000 euros or 1 million cedis is the latest support the group is offering the school and the development of the Tema Manhean community.

The opening of the classroom is in fulfilment of a promise made by Mytilineos S.A. via the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with St. Nicholas Charity Foundation, a school-based in Tema Manhean, to finance the construction of the classrooms.

The establishment of St. Nicholas Charity Foundation which currently has 190 children was funded by the Maria Tsakos Foundation, which supported the initial building work, and purchase of land and continues to give annual grants and at the same time Tsakos Hellas and family, which give the school food supplies, enabling the charity to give two meals per day.

This support was spearheaded by Madam Deborah J. Eleazar and Captain Kappas who continue to be active together with the Trustees in the UK, including Andreas Bisbal.

The pupils of the school are trained with Ghana Education Service certified lessons with extracurricular activities, including sports, navy cadet corps, and cultural dancing in addition to lessons in French and Greek language.

The inauguration ceremony was witnessed by several dignitaries, including a delegation from the donors Mrs Marianna Gavriel, Mr Mawuli Asempah, and Charalambos Anagnostou-Lalos amongst others.

“We warmly recognise the enormous contributions of the Mytilineous family and the support to the school from 2017, which have helped realise our dream and vision in enabling over 190 children to be given an equal opportunity they so deserve, to be educated at a high level with all the infrastructure necessary,” Ms Deborah Eleazar, co-founder and Trustee of the St Nicholas Charity, said in a speech read at the ceremony.

There is strong support given to the school by other Greek donors including Leon and Lotus Shipping from the Efthymiadis family, Haris Broumides of Vodafone as well as many individual Greek sponsors.

Last year, the school saw the historic visit of the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr Nikos Dendias and delegates from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Greek government, which had allowed for active support and much-needed resources for the school. The official visit by the Greek Foreign Affairs Minister was to donate covid vaccinations to the Ghana Government.

“We have been especially appreciative of the Minister Mr Dendias and Ministry of Foreign Affairs Greece with their initiative to invite Greek companies to become sponsors and support the ambition and projects of St Nicholas that is a school of equal opportunities and the inclusion of the school in the education program of schools outside of Greece.”, which has been coordinated through the representative Mr Alexandros Papaioannou who was part of the original delegation.

One exemplary initiative was the school bus purchase funding that was under the care of the Minister Mr Dendias and the active funding by Mr Evangelos Mytilineos and Ms Sophia Daskalaki Mytilineou is now a magnificent reality for the school and we hope to have the new 29-seater minibus in November 2022.

Mrs Marianna Gavriel pledged Mytilineos continuous support to the school, adding that the family will continue to do more in the future.

On a national level, we have Mr Ivan Quashigah of Farmhouse Productions, a strong supporter and Trustee of the school were is instrumental in arranging many educational programmes.

With its motto: EVERY CHILD DESERVES AN EDUCATION, St Nicholas believes in working with other charities for the benefit of all.