East Meadow teacher launches volunteer program in Ghana

What began as a weeklong stint with a volunteer teaching program in Ghana led Brianna Stratis to pursue a teaching career and launch the Ghana Volunteer Headquarters.

“I wanted to become a teacher my whole life, until I graduated high school, when I switched to the medical field,” Stratis, 25, said. “I wanted to become a physician’s assistant.”

Stratis grew up in Bethpage and graduated from Bethpage High School in 2012. She was 20 and in her junior year at LIU Post when she went to Dodowa, Ghana, for the first time with the international volunteer corporation Projects Abroad. For a week in 2014 she helped treat malaria and ringworm at medical clinics, and even had the chance to scrub in on a cesarean section.

It wasn’t until she had to cover for one of the volunteer teachers that same week that she was led to her dream job. “That moment was how I found my way back to what I was meant to do,” she said. Over the next three years, she returned to the country four times for up to 11 weeks at a time, and taught kindergarten through 12th-grade science and math.

In the spring of 2017, she started Ghana Volunteer Headquarters, a nonprofit organization that connects college-age volunteers with needy communities in Ghana. Medical volunteers are placed in hospitals or clinics, where they assist staff with everything from surgery to childbirth. Volunteer teachers work in classrooms and follow the Ghana Education Service syllabus in math, science, English, music and art. Volunteer programs last between one and 24 weeks.

Stratis was initially taken aback by the differences in Ghana’s culture. “It was my first time leaving the country, and I was alone,” she recalled. Men and women carried food on their heads. On every street, it seemed, there were local markets offering fresh fruit. Goats, pigs and dogs roamed freely. Most houses were made of cement, metal or sticks and mud.

Stratis, who stayed at an orphanage, was awakened by roosters before 5 in the morning. Not long afterward, the students with whom she stayed walked with her to the schoolhouse where they started the day.

In the United States, when students are disciplined, they might have their phones taken away. In Ghana, students who misbehave are smacked on the hands with a stick. “It’s hard to watch that, coming from another country where that isn’t legal,” Stratis said, “but it’s a way of life for them.” Other rules are just as strict. “If your uniform isn’t exact or your hair isn’t combed,” she said, “they’ll kick you out of school for the day.”

There were about 115 children in the orphanage, and 15 to 20 shared rooms that were about one quarter the size of a classroom. “There were bed bugs all over where the kids were sleeping,” Stratis said. “While most kids shared their beds, if there wasn’t enough space, the others would have to sleep on the floor.”

In Ghana, close to 6 million of the country’s 30.4 million people depend on surface water to meet their daily needs. Because there is widespread poverty and running water is expensive, most of the population does not have access to safe, treated water from pipes. On her most recent visit, in 2017, Stratis was sick for four months with an unknown parasite, and was hospitalized for a week.

Overall, however, she said, “After spending several months teaching there, I knew two things: One, I was meant to teach, and two, I needed to do something more to make a difference.”

She graduated from LIU Post in 2016 and took a year off from school before studying to be a teacher at SUNY Old Westbury in 2018.

Being exposed to a different culture and having a life-changing experience is just the start of what volunteering can provide, Stratis said. “It’s a very rewarding feeling to give back,” she said. “I realized that the people in Ghana who have nothing are a lot happier than some of the people here in America who have everything.”

Stratis joined the East Meadow School District in the fall of 2018, and started teaching earth scince and marine biology at W.T. Clarke Middle School before she was transferred, in the middle of the spring semester, to East Meadow High School to teach the same subjects.

Volunteers are currently working in Ghana with Ghana Volunteer Headquarters, and will return after two months. Stratis plans to bring in new volunteers by next April, and applications will be opened on a to-be-determined date.

In the future, she hopes to build a school in Ghana.

Her motto is “Give with your whole heart,” she said. “Your true intentions will always shine through, and if you truly want to help and make a difference, you will. Even if it’s just buying an extra chicken at BJ’s to give to a homeless guy in the parking lot, everything good counts, and is always going to make someone’s day better.”