Guest article by Dr. Joyce Bonafield-Pierce and Dr. Lewis Pierce on local/global care and service

Honored to share an inspiring guest article from Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) colleagues Dr. Joyce Bonafield-Pierce and Dr. Lewis Pierce. Joyce is a board member of World Citizen Peace and wrote her dissertation on eight schools in Finland, the world’s happiest country for the last seven years according to the World Happiness Report. I had asked Joyce if she would write a guest article. After my last CC essay on “Six Pathways”, she sent me the following piece that keeps the conversation going. The local and global service that she and her husband have done and are doing is inspiring. And happy 88th birthday today to Lewie!

Hi Rob and the Compassionate Conversations community,

My husband, Lewis Pierce, aka Lewie, and I subscribed to your Compassionate Conversations on Substack in 2023 and have just converted to paid subscribers. Thank you for putting it out! Reading all you are doing in six arenas is both inspiring and a bit mind-boggling at the same time. I am 80, and Lewie is 88 on Friday, 30 May.

We live in Minneapolis, MN, and are active in a United Church of Christ (UCC) church, which just changed its name from Mayflower to Creekside UCC. The church is very active with 35+ other churches at the state level known as the group ISAIAH which has helped to bring about paid family leave, Beacon Housing for those moving from homelessness to safe +affordable new housing, free lunches at all public schools K-12, after school programs geared toward each school's needs, support for early childhood education, and much more.

We just commemorated the 5th anniversary of George Floyd's murder yesterday, and among other things, we're seeing just how much system change from our city government/City Council on up is needed as we move forward in a darker time. We see the need for our inner work to grow, for our neighborhoods to create more active communities of care, for the need for finding ways of bridging that we had not considered before. Some of us are reading the book The Power of Bridging: How to Build a World Where All Belong by john. a. powell.

We have been married since early 2009, and the next day set off for Tanzania, where Lewie (a dentist, prosthodontist) set up a dental clinic in a village called Pommern, near Iringa. I worked in the high school with an art project and using games helped students put some finer points on their English. We also had a water project (wells, etc) going on by some Lutherans from St. Paul, MN. Lutheran Bishop Mdegela of Iringa District authorized and supported these projects. He also comes to Minnesota frequently because of a large group of colleagues here.

That summer, Global Volunteers asked if we could come to Ghana to create another dental clinic, so we came. The clinic took several years to come to real fruition, due to government oversight and lack of personnel, but it did happen. In the meantime, we came each year to keep that clinic development going, and learned that no one was attending high school, since tuition rates were far beyond the ability of the villagers.

So a group of about 12-14 of us created The Ghana Scholarship Fund (GSF) Inc. and began offering full scholarships to 20 students each year. Soon we had about 140 grads with some still in school. The government changed hands in 2016 to Mr. Addo, an educator who quickly set up a plan to have the government pay for anyone who could pass the BCEC exam to attend high school. Some of our HS grads asked us if they could get themselves accepted to an accredited Ghanaian university, would we consider sending them to university on a scholarship? So we changed our by-laws and began sending many of these students to university. To date, 94 are in or have graduated from university, and we aim to go to 100 students graduating from universities in Ghana.

In the interim, we have also funded students to technical, police academy, and other career oriented programs (outside of university degrees). Our graduates are filling lots of teaching, medical lab, nursing, business, hotel management positions, and two are in medical school - one in ophthalmology and one aiming to be a surgeon. Their parents do not read or write, but are so excited for their children finding pathways to a good living in their areas of interest. The GSF group, along with some area educators, have created an area library and computer center that now also has adult education (including computer training) programs.

When we go each year in early January (because our students/grads come back to their home of Senchi Ferry), we bring guests and have fun reflecting on their school year (by age group), holding writing workshops, visiting the now well-developed computer center, hearing what the students are studying and what their next steps are . . . and most recently, these roles are now being picked up by the college students and new graduates. The young children throng to get into the building for these events, and you can see the sparkle in their eyes about their own dreams that they're now bringing.

We have also worked in Ethiopia (a dental focused trip) and in the Copper Canyon in Mexico and two other places - near Mazatlan, and in El Fuerte (state of Chihuahua) -- setting up mobile dental clinics or providing dental care and education, bringing supplies for a clinic, etc.

Lewis experienced a stroke in late 2021 around Thanksgiving, which has changed our course quite seriously. We still serve on the board of The Ghana Scholarship Fund, but as we're aging out, we're planning to pass on the leadership to a younger group, mostly Ghanaians, as they move forward. We have had two boards of directors (Senchi Ferry residents and Americans) who have met together more and more as things have developed, so the leadership is now passing as it should. Our first woman HS grad, then first woman university grad, is now in Law school in Accra -- to graduate in two more years. It's so exciting to see how things grow from the seeds that were planted early on -- and always full of surprises — like your wild flower garden. 😊🙏

People everywhere are beautiful, bright, resourceful, and resilient, aren't they?

Grace, peace, and joy to you, 💌

Dr. Joyce Bonafield-Pierce and Dr. Lewis Pierce