Susan Dacosta
Phase
IICohort
7Being a Mastercard Foundation Scholar is more of a responsibility than a privilege to me. This is because I believe I have been chosen to be part of a family with a common vision to spearhead the changes we want to see in our mother continent Africa.
Susan’s passion for and desire to see Africa develop through education led her to join the Mentors Network at Ashesi which aims at mentoring secondary school students in rural communities in Ghana to improve school performance, thus, bridging the gap between the rural and urban students’ performance. She served as the president of the organization for two years and was responsible for facilitating the mentorship program. In 2018, Susan was awarded the Millennium Fellowship at Ashesi University. She also interned with the Gambia Ports Authority where she worked with a mechanical team that maintained heavy duty automobile machines which are used to lift big containers. She has experience with National Water and Electricity Company Limited-Gambia, as well, where she worked with a team that maintained power generators. She had the opportunity to witness and be part of the general overhaul of one of Gambia’s oldest generators after it functioned for sixteen thousand hours. During her three years at Ashesi, Susan also worked on several team projects including building a solar powered irrigation system in her freshman year and in her junior year, an electric “gari” sieving machine for a food processing firm in Ghana. Susan is an open-minded student, eager to learn new skills and get new experiences.