OUR STORY
Long before girls’ education became the rallying cry of celebrities, Peter Opa has worked very hard to help the girls in his African village get an education. He came to the United States to pursue the American dream. Soon after, he was overwhelmed with requests from young people needing help in his village to go to school.
In response, he changed his priorities. Rather than focus on himself, he decided to use his resources to bring hope to the school drop-outs in his village, the majority of whom are girls.
Peter and some of the young girls he's supporting.
Like in most places in Africa, many parents in his region prefer to send only the boys to school. The girls, on the other hand, are considered undeserving of education. Each time Peter goes home to visit, the let-down girls would beg him to plead with their parents to send them to school, some with tears in their eyes.
Wanting to help as many of them as possible, he started doing two jobs in America. Having four sisters himself, he could not imagine his own parents not allowing his sisters to go to school!
He has a deep compassion for the girls who are being denied an education because of their gender and the boys who are dropping out of school because they have nothing to eat.
It is his deep compassion that gave birth to the Food for School program in 2008 and continues to advance the mission today.
To learn more of Peter Opa's story, read the article published about him in Phoenix Magazine.