Like any good study abroad, the School of Accountancy’s second annual student trip to Ghana was packed with fascinating excursions— breathtaking waterfalls, a somber former slave castle, inspiring firesides with church members in Accra and Cape Coast, a selfie-worthy monkey sanctuary, and a thrilling bridge walk above the rain forest canopy.
And like any good accountant, the students on the trip gave top priority to one thing: their spreadsheets.
For the past two summers, SOA students have visited Accra, Ghana, to spend two weeks not only sightseeing but also volunteering their accounting skills to benefit local organizations. With the students’ long commutes from where they were staying, their time helping on-site was limited—so they logged plenty more spreadsheet hours each day back at the hotel.
“There was a culture within the group that we wanted to put in a little more effort on our own,” says Austin Argyle, a MAcc student who attended last year’s Ghana trip and was a TA for this year’s trip. “The side trips were fun, but students took initiative to spend free time getting more work done rather than shopping for souvenirs.”
“The students worked hard and played hard as well,” says Richard Sackitey, director of Ghana Make a Difference (GMAD), one of the partner organizations. “I have been fascinated with the effective and efficient manner in which they work.”
This year’s trip included six MAcc students and five undergraduate accounting students, with professors Steve Smith and Scott Hobson as faculty advisors. Student teams worked with two organizations: GMAD and Deseret Hospital.
Hatching a Profitable Venture
GMAD seeks to make a difference in the lives of Ghanaian children by providing them with food and a home, as well as physical, mental, and emotional nurturing, while trying to reintegrate them with their biological family or f ind them an adoptive family. It was founded in 2012 by Cory and Stacey Hofman, natives of Idaho who visited Ghana and were inspired to organize a home for Ghanaian children.
In order to feed the children, GMAD recently started a small poultry farm. They sell surplus eggs to raise funds for the home and teach the staff, the children, and their families how to be self-reliant.
That’s where the spreadsheets came in: Sackitey wanted to apply for a UN grant that would help GMAD grow its poultry venture, but there weren’t enough formal records to compile a grant proposal. So the students helped organize existing data and created an easy-to-use spreadsheet-based reporting system.
The data now shows per-chicken productivity, pinpoints potential areas for cutting costs, and makes projections for future revenues. Students also provided suggestions for marketing the eggs to the community and helped GMAD f ind a way to profitably dispose of aged chickens, eventually compiling all their f indings into a slick UN-ready proposal.
“This proposal was something we were not hopeful we could finish without their help,” Sackitey says. “This BYU student trip has been very successful and beneficial for the home and the children.”
Healing Cash-Flow Wounds
Deseret Hospital is committed to providing care to people with medical needs, regardless of their ability to pay, and serves tens of thousands of Ghanaians each year. The hospital was founded in 1979 by Dr. Emmanuel Kissi and his wife, Elizabeth Kissi, a nurse. The Kissis were also pioneers in helping establish the LDS Church in Ghana, with Dr. Kissi serving as Area Authority Seventy for the Africa West Area from 2002 to 2007.
Deseret Hospital’s most urgent problem was cash flow. Most of the care they provide is covered by government insurance, but the government hadn’t paid the hospital for eight months.
“They were slowly bleeding to death,” Argyle says. As part of a capital-budgeting process, the students researched machines the hospital could invest in to bring in nongovernment revenues. They proposed the purchase of a dialysis machine and offered suggestions for how to effectively implement a new medical procedure.
Students also helped in several other areas—troubleshooting management problems with administrators, creating more consistent procedures for recordkeeping, revamping the employee handbook, and helping stem the trend of bribes. According to a 2013 survey by Transparency International, 54 percent of Ghanaians reported that they paid bribes for services. In the case of Deseret Hospital, some nurses and front desk staff were expecting extra payment, and it was impairing patient care. Students wrote scenes depicting proper payment procedures and had hospital staffers act them out. They also created videos to train staff and educate patients.
Making a Difference
Nothing quite prepares you to step into a new culture, observes Melissa Larson, assistant teaching professor of accountancy and the faculty advisor for last year’s trip.
Larson cites one example: she was speaking with an organization director about a spreadsheet students were creating. He asked, “But what should we do when we don’t have power?” “What do you mean?” Larson replied. He explained that the whole country is rationed on power, with routine twenty-four-hour blackouts.
From experiences such as this, students quickly learned from the Ghanaians’ example of finding creative, entrepreneurial solutions within constrained circumstances.
“Often we want to go over and tell them, ‘If you do what we do, you’ll be happier,’” Argyle says. “But really, there are a lot of things we can learn from them. People know their business way better than we do, and they have great ideas to implement. If we can just listen and maybe add suggestions here and there, we’ll take away more than anything we provide.”
Additionally, many SOA students headed to Ghana expecting to stretch their more advanced, technical skills in helping the organizations—but they were in for a surprise. “It was still a lot of work, but we used the basic stuff—it was more a matter of how we could explain it well enough that someone else could understand and implement it,” Argyle says. “I didn’t realize the basic things I learned in school would be able to help so much.”
“For students it was so powerful to see that they could apply very basic accounting principles to make an immediate impact,” Larson says. “They are amazed to find that their skillset can already bless others, and they’re very grateful for that.”
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Evolution of a Study Abroad
The SOA Ghana trip is the result of the successful interweaving of several Marriott School programs.
SOA Nonprofit Initiative:
This program was created several years ago under the direction of SOA director Jeff Wilks to connect students with local organizations in need of accounting help. The Ghana trip takes the initiative to a global level.
MPA Ghana Trip:
MPA students have been taking trips to Ghana since 2004. Now MPA and SOA students travel together. They prepare beforehand by taking a course that reviews the economy, culture, and business environment of Ghana.
Management Society:
Students were able to connect with local organizations thanks to Seth Ogoe Ayim, founder and president of the Ghana chapter of the BYU Management Society. He’s currently an MPA student at the Marriott School and met with students to prepare them for the trip. He even arranged coverage on local TV and radio stations to publicize the students’ contributions.
“It’s a great way for the public to get to know more about BYU, the Management Society, and the church,” Ayim says. “They see that students are making a difference in the country.”