Creating equitable educational opportunities

For Saviour Anyargi, earning his MBA in business analytics this spring from the University of Delaware was one more accomplishment in his quest to provide equitable educational opportunities for children across the globe or in his homeland.

Growing up in the rural community of Yabrago in Garu, Upper East Ghana, Anyagri and his three older brothers learned the value of education from his parents, Nicholas and Vida, at an early age.

When he was 5 years old, the school Anyagri's father wanted him to attend was located far from the family's home. So Nicholas would wake his youngest son at 5:30 a.m. and together they'd make the hourlong trek by bike to the school. Nicholas, a farmer, would then pedal home, work on the farm, and head back to pick up Anyagri at the end of the day.

"There wasn't infrastructure or resources allocated to people in communities like where I was from, so if you wanted to go to school, either your parents could take you, or you had to wait until you were old enough to walk the distance," Anyagri said.

A year later, Anyagri's parents made the decision to send him away to live with a family that lived closer to the school so that he could walk. It was at that point that Anyagri began playing soccer and, at age 11, became good enough to represent his region, eventually earning a scholarship to an academy that was a day's trip from his family's home.

His performance at the academy enabled him to earn a scholarship to attend The Hotchkiss School, a prestigious prep school in Salisbury, Connecticut, at age 15.

It was there that Anyagri met Seidu Shamsudeen, a fellow Ghanaian who grew up in Bolgatanga in the country's northern region and had a similar level of access to education as Anyagri. The two had played for rival soccer clubs in Ghana and knew each other tangentially but didn't connect until both joined The Hotchkiss School.

In 2016, though both were just high school sophomores, an idea was born.

"When we got to Connecticut, we were a little behind in terms of how we wrote and how we interpreted English," Anyagri said. "We could speak it relatively well in Ghana, but getting here is a whole different level. We knew if we'd had the opportunity or access to educational curriculum back in Ghana, we would've had a better chance of picking things up more easily. So, because we've always had the idea of giving back, we thought about what we could do for the people back home. We wanted something that could be sustainable."

The plans were put on hold in 2018, when the pair graduated high school and went their separate ways to begin their college careers, both academically and on the soccer pitch - Anyagri at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Shamsudeen at nearby Villanova University.

After two years at Wofford, Anyagri transferred to UD and started all five games for the Blue Hen soccer team during the 2021 spring season. Meanwhile Shamsudeen joined the program for the 2022 fall campaign after earning his undergraduate degree from Villanova.

The two became teammates again during that 2022 season, with Shamsudeen scoring three goals for the Blue Hens while starting all but one match and Anyagri making 13 appearances in a reserve role.

Meanwhile, from 2016 to 2020 both Anyagri and Shamsudeen would return to Ghana during their breaks from college and host soccer tournaments where they'd talk to local children. It was during those encounters that Anyagri realized the students' education was lacking, or nonexistent.