Enoch Opare Mintah

When Ghanaian-born Enoch was still young, he realized that that the only way out of poverty was to take advantage of education. Although the highest level of education in his family up to that point was Junior High School, Enoch’s mother had encouraged his love for learning by taking him to a professional neighbour’s house for discussions – and later on, the headmaster at his Junior High School offered Enoch support and coaching that allowed him to make the most of his gifts. Upon entering Senior High School, Enoch came top of the Best Students League from his first year until leaving school – an unbeatable record which stills stands today.

Despite these successes, Enoch could not afford university after completing Senior High School in 2008. To raise money for university study, he had to teach part time, sell recharge cards and mobile phones for three years on the streets. He also took part-time teaching jobs to keep him active in the field of learning. As an undergraduate Enoch continued teaching to earn money, while also sponsoring a niece’s Senior High School education and volunteering with NGOs in deprived rural communities. As part of this, he led a group teaching final year students for their Basic Education Certificate Examination during the summer holidays, where he saw first-hand the liberating and transforming power of education.

The contribution Enoch is proudest of, however, is the creation of the Ubuntu project, which connected a co-educational special needs school in the UK with mainstream students in rural Ghana. Technology was leveraged to share experiences and connect two different student cultures in the heat of the pandemic, when schools were shut down. This brought enormous benefit to the two schools: the UK school sent over 4000 books, lunch boxes and educational DVD cartoons to Ghana, while the Ghanaian students sent Ghanaian story books to the UK and started the first African bookshelf in their library.

Enoch has a long list of academic achievements. He completed his Bachelor’s in English as the second-best student in the English Department for the 2015 academic year, and also won the prestigious $800 E-Syllabus Scholarship award for his final year undergraduate studies. He was selected as one of the 100 best essay winners for the 3rd Hague Peace conference at The Hague University of Applied Sciences in 2015. More recently, he was awarded a full scholarship to represent Ghana at the Rome Press Game of the 2019 International Careers Festival, and in 2020, Enoch was awarded the University of Lincoln’s Africa Merit Award of £5000 and the University of Liverpool’s £27,000 MBA scholarship in 2021

If Enoch wins the Global Student Prize, he will use $10,000 to offset the loan for his master’s program and commit another $10,000 to his upcoming PhD research in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting. The remaining $30,000 would be used to expand the Ubuntu project’s “Feed the Library” drive, aimed at providing libraries with educational materials, both print and electronic, for students between the ages of 5 to 16.